


The Repercussions of Familial Attachment

by unstablekybercrystal



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Armitage Hux Has Feelings, Badass Phasma, Cunnilingus, F/F, Fingering, First Time, Gen, Guns, HATE THAT WORD!!, Half-Siblings, Hux is Not Nice, Kissing, Lesbians in Space, feel like i gotta say it, gay!Hux, just like hux, lesbian!keira, some kylux may or may not be coming, these tags are a mess, this isn't gonna be incest or anything close to it, well blasters really
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-16
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-05-07 16:20:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14674838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unstablekybercrystal/pseuds/unstablekybercrystal
Summary: Colonel Armitage Hux has been searching for his half-sister for years.Keira Mata grew up on a weapons test planet for the First Order, until she was brought up onto a star destroyer to save her life.But there is something different about Keira, something he can't quite discern but which permeates every aspect of her being. She holds deeper power than either of them could ever imagine.(Edit: I put spaces between paragraphs because I realized I forgot to do that. Sorry!)





	1. despite everything, i'm still human

**Author's Note:**

> Hux has a sister! I get pretty deep into his character and stuff in this, and also I hope you love Keira as much as I do! The chapter is a line from Daughter's song Human. TWs//death of a minor character

The second sun swung low beneath the smoking trees, burning blood red against the orange sky and casting ghastly shadows along the stretch of land where Keira Mata sat, staring out at the ocean. Its vastness had never frightened her; rather, it comforted her whenever she made the long walk from her home to the sea, the sour wind lifting her bright auburn hair off her shoulders. Keira’s hair was probably the brightest thing in the area, maybe even on the entirety of the war-torn planet of Takvo, besides the dusty sky and the laser beams that had, more than once, struck the ground of the planet from above.

  
Takvo was lucky. Though it was a First Order weapons test planet, it was technically under protection. It could be burned to a crisp, but it would never be entirely reduced to rubble and asteroids by any weapon. Keira was used to the smoldering ground under her feet and the musty, biting air that she had grown up breathing in since she was only maybe three years old. She’d never known her birthday, though, because Keira was found among the rubble of the first strike on Takvo by the First Order, wrapped in simple black sheets with the Order’s insignia embroidered on them in silver. Next to her had been the body of a woman, a girl really, in a tattered apron and jumpsuit with the same symbol. Her dark features were sharply defined against her pale skin, and her face had been set in a silent scream after her death. The woman's amber eyes had been open, staring at the crimson clouds. Vidia Mata, who came to be Keira’s adoptive mother, closed them, buried the girl, and carried the pinched, red-headed baby four miles to her ramshackle house. Ten minutes later, the First Order made their second strike on that exact piece of land.

  
But now Keira was resigned to walking back and forth along the ashy road, barefoot as usual, to the beach to stare out at the vastness of the ocean. It was never beautiful to look at; nothing on Takvo really was, but the size of the ocean baffled Keira to no end. As far as she knew, no one had traveled it or explored it, and she desperately wanted to be the first. But Mum had been clear; she was only allowed to go up to her knees, lest she get swept out into the unknown current. Sometimes Keira looked upwards, too, but if she looked too long she’d think too much about how that’s where she was from. No one on Takvo was allowed in the air, because their air didn’t belong to them. It belonged to the beings in sleek ships that Keira saw occasionally. Mum had told her in hushed tones that they didn’t see Takvo as an inhabited planet, and that they used it for the testing of bombs and other weapons. But they, Mum said, were safe.

  
Keira wasn’t too sure.

  
The shore was dangerous; it was the edge of the safe zone. She’d even seen an explosive dropped into the water once, the waves disappearing and then growing so strong that she had to run back home as fast as she could. Another time, one of the aircrafts flew toward her and came so close that she could almost see the pilot in it, a phantom who seemed to be just out of her vision. It had hovered in the air for a second, as if it were looking at her, and something in her stomach has lurched so violently that she doubled over. But it disappeared as soon as it came, and so did the pressing on Keira’s stomach. Her fingers twitched just thinking about it, and she rose up from the rock she was sitting on, feeling as if someone had burned her.

  
Maybe they knew she was one of them; Mum was sure of it and had told Keira to stay away from the sea, but she couldn’t do it. She had to drink in every inch of the water and collect every single grain of sand before she would be able to leave, and even then, she wouldn’t.

  
Keira launched herself off the rock, jumping into the warm sand, and ran into the water like she had as a child, barefoot and laughing and completely covered in freckles from the suns’ heat. The water’s coolness danced around her ankles and feet like a familiar kiss and she laughed, more loudly than she would have dared to a few moments ago. It seemed to swirl around her feet in a set pattern, over and under, until she realized that the water was moving around her faster than the tide was rolling. She jumped back, alarmed.

  
Then she saw it, just a tiny black speck against the blood red of the Alder Sun, but growing at an alarming rate. Keira stepped out of the water, which let go of her, and began to run, though she knew how futile it was. The aircraft was moving faster than she had ever seen one go, and her heart jumped into her chest. Keira’s bare feet slapped the sandy stone as the aircraft zoomed toward her, closer, closer, and she felt all moisture in her mouth disappear. There was sand between her back teeth, and her short red hair had come undone from the haphazard, makeshift pigtail it had been in.

  
The aircraft was close, so close, so so so so close. Keira was sure she’d trip, but by some miracle, she caught herself and continued running, wondering why the aircraft hadn’t stopped over the water, unable to shake the feeling it was following her. As if out of nowhere, three more appeared, and Keira realized that she could be followed to her house. She didn’t want Mum to be a part of whatever was going to happen to her; Mum with her halo of hair and kindly gray eyes with lines around them from squinting into the suns.

  
Keira lay face down in the sand. The aircrafts passed over her, still higher in the sky than she thought they’d be. She breathed a sigh of relief; they weren’t following her after all. She watched them land out of the corner of her eye, right next to the path that she would inevitably have to walk to get home, but she decided to mind her own business, and hopefully whoever the people in the crafts were would mind theirs. From what Keira knew of them, the First Order wouldn’t care about a twenty-year-old human girl with no shoes walking down a road. They probably wouldn’t even see her as alive. She kept walking, knowing she couldn’t possibly look suspicious but acutely aware of the fact that they could perceive her as such if she made the slightest mistake.

  
But she was also curious; she’d never seen anyone up close who wasn’t from Takvo, and there was almost nobody on Takvo. She hoped they’d get out, just for a second, so she could see what all the fuss about the First Order was. And they did, two from each craft, though Keira couldn’t really see much else.

  
As she got closer, she almost darted off the path and onto the sharper, surrounding rocks. The crafts were larger than she expected them to be; each one larger than her home, even, and made of sleek black metal. On the cracked ground of Takvo, they seemed so ridiculously out of place, but she knew she’d have to walk near them or risk looking suspicious.

  
Keira was close enough to hear one man’s voice, though not what he was saying, and she assumed him to be the leader. She walked just a little faster, wanting to observe them some more, and at last she could.

  
“Really is a shithole, isn’t it?” a woman said. All of them were in almost the same uniform except the leader; his was slightly different. The woman’s black hair hung down her back in a long, severe braid, her body tightly wound.

  
“It is, Corporal Ester, and I would give anything to destroy it, but we can’t. Not until we confirm it’s out of use.” That was the leader, his voice clearer and louder than the woman’s. Keira couldn’t get a good look at him, but both their voices sounded clipped and short, not like her own long-voweled speech. She caught sight of a rock beside the path, just large enough to duck behind, and did just that, making sure to hide her bright hair.

  
“It seems out of use to me, Colonel,” Ester grumbled. “Doubt anyone lives here.”

  
Keira felt her chest tense. Takvo was the only home she’d ever known, and here were these people talking about it as if it were a land of garbage. She made a mental note to tell them about the thin but glimmering creek that ran behind her home if she was discovered.

  
“Only about a hundred do,” said a new voice, this one male. “Well, only about thirty if you count just human life.”

  
“We only count human life,” said the Colonel. Keira grit her teeth. “We can give them notice to leave, since it is our planet, and take the rest on board with us to use as we see fit.”

  
Ester snorted. “Would they even be useful to us?”

  
“The ship is understaffed as it is,” the Colonel responded. “They will be useful.”

  
A buzzing entered Keira’s head, louder than she had ever felt it, and before she knew it she had kicked a gigantic amount of sand off to the side. She froze, praying that no one had seen her.

  
“What was that?” a different voice said. “Over by the rock.”

  
Keira held her breath, sure that even the slightest sound would reveal her. Her face was hot, red tendrils of hair plastered to her forehead, and she felt her hands begin to tremble. At the sound of footsteps coming toward her, Keira straightened up, figuring it would be less awful for her if she revealed herself. “Sorry, sorry,” she said, her own voice suddenly sounding rough next to theirs. “I was just taking a rest.” She stood, suddenly aware of her lack of shoes and dusty dress that she couldn’t recall washing in the last week. They all were so clean; Keira had never seen anything like it in her life. “I’ve been walking home, see, and my legs got tired,” she babbled.

The woman she knew to be Ester looked over her shoulder at the Colonel. “Is this what lives here?” she said with a quirk of her lips. “Our assets?”

  
Keira looked more closely at the Colonel, who frowned even more deeply than he had been before. His skin has a similar pallor to Keira’s own, though not as sun-deepened as hers. His eyes were light in color but deep-set and ringed with circles. And his hair— Keira stopped in her tracks. It was red, like hers, though much shorter and largely hidden under his hat. She’d never laid eyes on anyone else with the same hair as her before, and she couldn’t help but break into a smile, even though she knew just how stupid that looked.

  
“Halt!” the man beside Ester said. He lifted something from his pocket, something that registered ever so slightly in Keira’s mind. A blaster. She jumped backwards immediately. “Don’t hit me with that,” she said sharply, which only made him raise it more.

  
“At ease, Major Jadel,” the Colonel said, his pale eyes flicking from Jadel to Keira. “They have no upbringing here. The girl knows virtually nothing about anything.”

  
“No kidding,” Ester muttered.

  
Keira walked a step closer. “I’m not stupid,” she said, though her heart was pounding so hard in her chest that she was sure everyone could hear it. “I’ve just—“ She felt blood rush to her ears, embarrassed. “There isn’t anyone with hair like mine here. I wanted to see. I’m sorry.”

  
The Colonel’s face didn’t soften. “You’ve seen it. Run along.” Keira felt as though she was being taken apart by him, spoken to like a child; there was something about the way he stood that set her on edge, something about his nose and downturned mouth and how his brows drew together and how his eyes widened slightly when he noticed she was still looking at him. She thought of the sea, winding and curling around her feet. “State your name,” he said finally. He was taller than she thought he was from afar, at least a head taller than Keira, who had always been small despite being broad and muscular in stature.

  
“Keira Mata,” she said, a hitch in her voice. “I really have to get home. My mum’s waiting for me—“ She slammed her lips together at the mention of Mum, who she didn’t want to bring into this at all.

  
The Colonel looked as though he were memorizing her name, and Keira had to fight the primal urge to run with all her might. “Sir,” she said lamely, looking down at her feet. Ester and a blonde woman chuckled.

  
“I think she could be of help to us,” said Jadel slowly, even though Ester snorted at him. “How well do you know Takvo?” he asked Keira. Jadel’s eyes were not quite as hard as Ester’s and the Colonel’s, though his blaster did hang at his hip like a threat.

  
“I’ve lived here—uh—my whole life,” Keira lied. Somehow, she figured it would be unwise to tell them that she was really probably one of them by blood.

  
“And are you loyal to the First Order?” Ester asked, her dark eyes boring into Keira.

  
She shrugged. “I’d say so.” She didn’t know what else she’d be loyal to. Mum, maybe, and some of the people in the village.

  
“Go on, then, Major,” the Colonel said. “We do require a guide.”

  
“Ah, Colonel, you’re partial to her because of her hair, is that right?” Ester arched a brow. “She seems quite scrappy to me.”

  
“We are on a test planet, Corporal, of course they’re unrefined, they shouldn’t even be alive. I am not partial to anyone. Now, you and Sergeant Isabla follow with the privates,” the Colonel snapped. He was like a black hole, she realized, a complete absence of anything. His blood seethed, and Keira could almost feel it coursing in her own veins. He wanted power. Keira had always been able to tell that kind of thing, especially when it dripped off the straight-laced Colonel like arsenic. He was so young, not a day past thirty, and yet he was consumed.

  
“Colonel,” Keira blurted. He turned to look at her. “Excuse me for asking, but why come to Takvo?”

  
She knew the answer already, but hearing it set her teeth on edge. “The First Order intends to destroy the planet Takvo because it has lost all usefulness. All citizens will be evacuated and employed by courtesy of the First Order.” The Colonel smiled; it was the most false, cringing smile Keira had ever seen.

  
“It’s not outgrown its usefulness,” Keira said, aware that she shouldn’t be talking. “People live here.”

  
“Precisely why we will allow you onto our ship. There will be no loss of human life on Takvo, as the treaty says.”

  
Keira’s heart plummeted to her feet. “Not only humans live here,” she said, balling her fists behind her back until she saw Jadel reach for his blaster.

  
The Colonel started walking down the path, motioning for Keira to walk next to him. She did so nervously, Jadel and his blaster behind her. “Loss of non-human life is no matter to the First Order,” the Colonel said bluntly. Keira felt numb. “We simply cannot allow the New Republic to acquire the planet, no matter how—“ He looked at the scorched earth beneath him. “—Low in resources it may be.”

  
“You’re going to blow it up.” Keira felt her hands shake. “You can’t do that.”

  
“I can do exactly that,” the Colonel said. He didn’t look at Keira; he hadn’t since they had started walking with each other. She heard Jadel adjust his blaster.

  
“No,” Keira murmured. “Mum said... Mum said that’ll never happen.”

  
The Colonel made a tsking sound. “It must be done, Keira.” He rolled the R in her name; it sounded pretentious and mocking. “I’m not one for arguing with civilians, especially ones who seem not to know the importance of a shower. Best tread lightly.”

  
Keira turned to him, her eyes fixed on the small stripe of red hair that led onto his jawline. “I’m sorry, sir,” she muttered, the strange feeling overtaking her again and replacing the anger rising from her sternum. She was overwhelmed; her mind was screaming wordlessly in each ear and she couldn’t help but tremble ever so slightly. He was confused, his mind was reeling, and Keira was intuitive enough to feel it. “What’s your name, sir?”

  
“I am not here to make petty conversation. Shall we turn left or right?”

  
“Right,” said Keira without thinking; the way to Mum and to the village. She bit her tongue after, because why on Takvo would she say that? “But really, what is it? As I don’t want to be sitting here calling you Colonel in my head.”

  
His face darkened. “That is all you will call me,” he said, but haltingly. The cogs of his brain were still moving full speed, but Keira couldn’t tell why. “I should like to see your mother, Keira.” The Colonel’s voice was quiet, almost soft.

  
“You can’t,” Keira almost said, but instead her face just grew hot. She could now feel the heat of the stone on her feet, even though she had become immune to it. She desperately wished she had washed her clothes or wore Mum’s soft boots. “I will show you to her, sir. My home is on the way.” Keira was shaking more now, her legs slightly unsteady.

  
Jadel leaned over. “Don’t worry. You’ve done the correct thing,” he said under his breath. Keira breathed a sigh of relief. She turned to the Colonel, only to find that he was already dissecting her. His eyes were green, like hers, though his were very light and hers were dark.

  
“Our eyes are green as well,” she said, not realizing she said it aloud.

  
But he responded. “A different green.” It was a short, bitter response, and he spat the words out. “Common for people with your coloring.”  
They walked in virtual silence after that, with Keira oddly in tune with his confusion and starting to feel it herself. Her house rose up onto the horizon, a blink of light in the darkening desert. Mum had left the rusty lights on outside, and Keira wished there was some way to warn her that she wasn’t going to be coming home alone. The Colonel sniffed. “You live there,” he said simply, but his voice had an edge to it.

  
“Yes, sir, would you like me to tell my mum you’re here? She could set up some tea for you. It must have been tiring to get all the way here in those crafts. Do you—“

  
“Shut up,” the Colonel snapped. Keira drew back slightly, her dogged steps falling behind his brisk ones. His boots clacked on the rocks, and Keira felt a wave of nausea wash over her as she spotted Mum walking out the door, ready to tend to the tiny garden that she somehow kept up.

  
Turn around, Mum, please, Keira thought. To her shock, Mum did turn, startled, and spotted Keira and the entourage she had with her. Even at a distance, Keira saw her mum’s face harden. She started toward them, walking so quickly it was almost a run, and reached the group in record time. Vidia clasped her daughter’s hand between her own. Though she didn’t say anything, Vidia looked straight at Keira, and Keira could have sworn she heard her mother’s voice in her head: _Let me deal with them_. She invited them for tea, as Keira expected she would, but Vidia seemed very drawn and resigned as she allowed the officers to talk amongst themselves. Keira haltingly took a seat next to the Colonel, the only empty one, and busied herself with her tea.

  
“This isn’t bad,” Jadel said, looking at the tea leaves at the bottom of the cup. “Did you know they used to read people’s fortunes using tea leaves?”

  
“Impertinent, Jadel,” the Colonel sneered. Jadel gave Keira the tiniest of glances, and she smirked. “Which way to the village?” Jadel continued, not quite looking at Vidia.

  
She didn’t meet his eyes, either. “Just follow the road.”

  
Keira hated how soft her mother’s voice was. _You didn’t do anything wrong. Ki, don’t be scared. Just don’t say anything to them that could be of any importance._ Vidia’s voice in Keira’s head was faint, plaintive, and Keira remembered that her mother could sometimes do things others couldn’t. Vidia was in touch with everything on the planet.

  
“Mind if your daughter takes us?” Ester said, spitting out the word “daughter” like a sneeze. Her wiry shoulders tensed so much that Keira could see the muscles underneath her uniform clench.

  
Vidia still didn’t look up from her tea, but Keira knew her mother well enough to know that she was afraid. “I mean, you’ll have to,” she said, nothing betraying the emotions that Keira could palpably sense coming off of her. She wasn’t just responding to Ester, she was telling Keira she absolutely had to go with them.

  
And Keira did, wearing Vidia’s boots and with her hair that she had brushed hastily while the Colonel was helping himself to a third cup of the ridiculously expensive tea that Vidia had set out. They left afterwards, supposedly led by the Colonel but really led by Keira. She felt stronger, somehow, filled with a satisfying surge of power, until she had tripped over a rock and fallen.

  
It wasn’t a big deal at all, not until the Colonel himself knelt down beside her, placing a hand on her shoulder so tentatively that Keira thought he was trying to exactly replicate how he had seen someone else do it. “You’re bleeding,” he said.

  
“So I am.”  
“I’ll clean that for you,” he responded mechanically, so much so that Keira started to wonder if he was a hyper-realistic droid of some sort. He took a handkerchief (really!) from the front pocket of his uniform and wiped the blood off of the rock, though not off of Keira’s actual leg, and folded it precisely back into his pocket.  
“My leg,” she said, again not realizing that she’d said that out loud to him.

  
The Colonel’s lips pressed together. “I couldn’t use it after I’d already put it on the rock.”

  
Keira raised an eyebrow. “It’s just a cut,” she said, at the same time as he said, “It’s really nothing.”

  
Suddenly, a sharp pain barreled into Keira’s side: the toe of Ester’s boot. “Get up,” she said tiredly, not even looking at Keira.

  
“Corporal Ester,” the Colonel snapped. She snorted, but said nothing.

  
Keira tried to meet his eyes to let out a smirk like she had with Jadel, but the Colonel didn’t seem like he smirked at anything except for maybe the death of an unfortunate enemy.

  
The village was nearly deserted, most people working in Takvo’s one fabric factory, so not many Takvans noticed the crisp uniforms walking down the street, and even less noticed Keira with them. Jadel seemed fairly charmed by it, no matter how many times the Colonel curled his lip or Ester made some snide comment. Keira even went so far as to show Jadel some of the planet’s foods, which he didn’t really like but was definitely willing to try. It was a pity he had to be a soldier, really, even though that was really all he was trained to be.

  
Once the night grew dark, Keira and the soldiers left the village and trekked all the way back to the ships, past the tiny shanties and stalls and over the stream. They crossed Keira’s entire world in barely any time at all. She was, in fact, permitted to talk about Takvo, about its sunsets and the little green plants that grew around the stream and the people who silently greeted each other by tilting their heads to the left. And all the while, the Colonel’s eyes burned like hot pokers into the back of her neck, his confusion forming a cloud around his body.

  
And once they’d gone back from whence they came, Vidia met Keira outside the house and held her tightly, so, so tightly that Keira couldn’t breathe.

  
“None of it is going to be your fault,” she said. Keira felt tears on her shoulder, underneath her mother’s face. “You’re so brave. I love you.”

  
“Mum?” Keira started to shake. “What are you talking about.”

  
A shadow crossed Vidia’s face. “Nothing. Just... whatever happens. You know. With them. With that man. Be careful around him.”

  
Keira nodded, terrified, and buried her face in the soft skin of her mother’s neck.

  
  
TEN DAYS LATER

  
  
They had taken everyone onto a ship three days before. Most people were screaming, knowing that their loved ones were still down on Takvo, their non-human friends and families’ wails reaching up to the craft like spectral hands grasping at the ship. Keira was detached, detached, detached, knowing that she couldn’t speak a word and even if she did, nothing she could say would matter to them.

  
That was when Ester had killed her mother.

  
Keira hadn’t heard it, hadn’t seen Ester walk in among the Takvans in her pressed uniform, looking as though she were standing in a sewer. She hadn’t seen Ester pull out a blaster and hold it by her hip, long fingers grasping until they found the trigger. But she had heard the shot, the screams, and saw Vidia on the ground, looking smaller than ever and helpless under Ester’s gaze.

  
Keira’s vision went blank. Then she screamed, a low, guttural sound that continued for longer than Keira thought she could ever scream, until her voice was hoarse and Ester grabbed her by the arm and pointed her blaster at Keira’s throat.

  
“Do it,” Keira said. Ester scoffed and lowered the blaster.

  
“Colonel Hux was right, you are insolent.” Keira spat in her face.

  
She kneeled beside her mum, not believing for a second that she could even possibly be dying until the red stain on her clothing spread so wide that it was impossible that she could breathe for much longer. The only medic on the planet hadn’t been human, and anyone who tried to help Vidia was immediately apprehended by Ester, except for Keira. It was as if there were an invisible barrier around her and her mother, spreading out and blocking every single cursed inch of the outside world.

  
_Keira. Be strong. For me. I love you so much_. Vidia’s voice was in her head, and yet it still sounded weak, rasping. It was impossible, there was no way Mum could die in her arms, it was too poetic and too cliche a death for her. And yet, Keira kissed her forehead amidst wracking sobs and soft touches on the cheek from Vidia, who looked as if just raising her arm pained her.

  
Vidia’s hand fell limply from Keira’s cheek and hit the floor of the craft, and Keira did everything she possibly could to not attack Ester immediately, Ester with her sneer and starched clothes and hard stone eyes. She screamed again, thrashing, holding Vidia in her arms until both of them grew cold and one of the lights above Keira blew out and shattered glass onto the both of them as Keira anointed Vidia’s unmoving face with tears. She didn’t care. She no longer cared about anything but Mum’s blue lips and closed eyelids and god, she would never let go of her.

  
A sharp pain eased into her spine. She turned, looked into Ester’s granite eyes, saw the glint of a needle in her gloved hand, and fell to the ground beside Vidia’s body.


	2. you gave up being good when you declared a state of war

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Hux confirms what he already knew, and Keira begins a new life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I don't know a whole lot about the more obscure Star Wars canon, so if I get anything wrong feel free to let me know (politely lmao)! The chapter title is from Kill v. Maim by Grimes.

Colonel Armitage Hux was glad that the lights on this part of the ship turned off at night, because nobody passing by could immediately tell that he was the one walking hastily to the test labs. It was off-putting, though, that he had to carry a flashlight to see where he was going, because had he not been carrying it, he’d be able to hold his blade in that hand.

  
The other hand grasped one handkerchief, dotted with blood, concealed almost completely. It wasn’t that anyone would question Hux, at least hopefully not, but his nerves got the best of him nonetheless. Because he wasn’t supposed to be walking to the lab at 0400, and he was certainly not supposed to meet up with one of the lab assistants in order to test the blood on the handkerchief.

  
Earlier that year, Hux had located something in his father’s belongings, something that had shocked him just enough to intrigue him: a report on the “disposal” of two persons, a woman and a child, at the behest of Brendol himself, onto the planet Takvo. No one got left on Takvo except to die, especially since the report indicated that the woman and child had been left in a strike zone. It was barbaric, it was ridiculous; it was exactly something that his father would do. Hux suspected the baby had been his father’s, and had realized with a start that that baby could have been him, its bones splayed across the cracked rocks of Takvo, soon to be blown into dust by another weapons test.

  
And then, he had led his first scouting mission to Takvo, to determine whether it should be destroyed, and as he had flown over the tiny settlement there, he had spotted her. A woman, really a girl, no older than twenty, with red hair chopped indelicately above her ears, was standing in the ocean, far from the village and just on the edge of the test zone. It was an insolent, childish, fleeting thought that had driven Hux to fly closer to her, and an even more ridiculous (but characteristic) one that made him want to fire on her when he was close enough to see the familiar set of her shoulders.

  
It really couldn’t be. Hux had turned around just as he thought he could see the whites of her eyes, the fear in them, those eyes that he didn’t want to come close enough to to be able to tell what color they were. Besides, the mother had been dead, and no one would have been able to rescue the child, no one would be stupid enough to venture into that no-man’s-land.

  
Hux didn’t believe in fate, and he never would, but it was certainly a strong coincidence that the girl had been following their ship, months later. He had known she was there the entire time, her steps altogether too heavy to be secretive, her hair too bright to be fully hidden. He knew that predicament well.

  
She was annoying. He had expected nothing less, but a small part of him had hoped the girl wouldn’t be stupid. So far, though, she was exceedingly so. If they were related, at least he would be the superior sibling.

  
_Sibling_. He hated that word. It felt foreign in his mind, not to mention on his tongue, especially in reference to some sturdy little desert girl who seemed to have nothing to offer besides anger, confusion, and Brendol’s nose smack dab in the middle of her face.

  
Her eyes were green. Her jaw was altogether larger and more well-shaped than Hux’s own, which irrationally made him hate her more. He clutched the handkerchief more tightly in his hand as he opened the door to the laboratory, hoping that it was just a coincidence that Keira had red hair and his father’s nose and his father’s jaw and a strangely Imperial accent for someone who had grown up in the middle of nowhere. Coincidences happened all the time.

  
“Colonel,” Hara Trayler said. She worked in the lab; Hux didn’t know her rank, even, but it was certainly higher than his own, so he saluted her. “Is it about—“

  
“Yes. I would just like some peace of mind,” Hux responded before she could finish. He held out the handkerchief.

  
Hara cocked an eyebrow. “You got her blood? I really would have accepted a strand of hair, Colonel.” She laughed, a harsh, wheezing sound made harsher by the years of chemicals that had eroded her throat. Her hair, once brown, had turned prematurely white, and a strand of it hung in her face as she looked down at the handkerchief.

  
“She fell and cut her knee. I didn’t stab her, if that’s what you’re saying,” Hux snapped.

  
Hara powered up the DNA scanner and shrugged. “They say you’re ruthless, Colonel. Anyway, did you say you think she’s in the First Order’s records?”

  
Hux nodded. “Probably under “‘deceased.’” Hara had clearance that he didn’t have, and she could view the records of people that the Order would rather claim never existed.

  
“It’ll take a few seconds to scan,” Hara said to her screen, which she was looking at intently.

  
Those few seconds passed in silence. “Well?” said Hux, his patience fraying

.  
“One match,” Hara said softly, and clicked. _Alisande Arden Hux, b. 9 ABY, d. 12 ABY._

  
Hara’s eyes met Hux’s own. She opened her mouth to speak, but Hux simply glared and took the handkerchief back, his face reddening.

  
“Congratulations,” Hara said softly as he turned on his heel and left.  
  
***  
  
Keira had her father’s eyes. His father’s eyes. Hux himself had inherited his mother’s icy blue-green, but Brendol’s had been a muddy hazel that sometimes would flash amber, and were a dull brownish grey when Hux closed them for the final time. 

  
Hux couldn’t stand to look at Keira, and made sure to avoid the captives at all costs. The shape of her shoulders mirrored Brendol’s exactly, and the ruddiness of her freckled cheeks matched his face, which Hux remembered turning purple with rage whenever his son had stepped a fraction of a toe out of line. Her mother, though, must have been small, because Brendol had stood over six feet, while Hux wasn’t entirely sure that Keira even cleared five. But though he could see his father in her face, there was a quality there that Brendol had never possessed. He’d come close, though, when he’d been asleep as a seventeen-year-old Hux attempted to slit his throat in the wee hours of the morning.

  
Innocence, maybe? Curiosity? Hux wasn’t too worried. If anything, Keira was intrigued by the Order, not repelled by it, although the unfortunate mishap with Ester may have set her off track. Hux made a mental note to let Keira know that her mother’s murder was not part of his plan at all.

  
In fact, as soon as he’d found out about it, Ester had been shot, point-blank, upon reentering the ship. Hux had always hated Ester and the way she acted tough to kiss up to him. He hadn’t thought she was capable of murder, but Brendol hadn’t thought him or Phasma capable of it, either. And Vidia Mata’s murder had been in complete defiance of his orders, which had been to question the older woman. She was suspected to be a Force user, though Hux wasn’t entirely sure if he believed that. He also didn’t believe the rumors that Keira had blown all the lights in the ship out after Vidia died, and how no one seemed to want to come close to the girl as sobs racked her body and she clutched her mother in her arms. The girl seemed completely unextraordinary to him, and had she not been his half-sister he wouldn’t have given a damn if she made it off the transport ship alive.

  
His half-sister. Hux shuddered, wondering if there were others. He decided he didn’t want to find out. As a boy, he had wished for a sibling, since Brendol didn’t allow him to have friends outside of the academy, but even at age seven, a crude girl from a junk planet was not what Hux would have had in mind. Nobodies from barren desert planets were usually the harbingers of success and glory, as far as he knew, and Keira didn’t seem particularly intelligent or sharp. He was sure she had never practiced mathematics.

  
He had wanted to drop the Takvans off on some other planet, but his superiors had disagreed, instead preferring to take the children as Stormtroopers and the adults as “help”. They were, essentially, going to do droid’s work, as well as repair the ship when it needed to be fixed.

  
Except Keira. Hux had requested that Keira train to be an officer. He didn’t say why, exactly, but he said he had observed her and seen leadership traits radiating off of her, which wasn’t exactly a lie. And maybe, just maybe, little seven-year-old Armie from Jakku was just a little bit intrigued at the idea of her. And perhaps part of him hated that her mother had been torn from her as his had.

  
The request had been accepted within the next couple of cycles, and Keira would be permitted to rise up to the rank of Major, though no further since she had neither Academy training nor Imperial bloodline, as far as they knew. Brendol would have scoffed at Hux now, for being so sentimental, but it was efficient: the Order needed personnel, and Keira Mata did seem the most fit for duty. Once she was done being trained, he was confident that she would be nearly indistinguishable from the Academy-bred officers. She could even be frightening, with her defined facial features that were just a bit too similar to his own for him to grasp completely. Though he’d barely observed her, there was something chilling about the sidelong smirks and slight expressions that made his stomach drop; they were as familiar to him as his own face, and in fact, they were his face. He hoped the freckles would fade with lack of sun, though, since they looked slightly frivolous.

  
He wasn’t exactly looking forward to the first couple of weeks, though. Keira was entirely uneducated and would definitely ask thousands of questions. She was still such a child, and he doubted she would immediately fit in with any of the junior officers, even though many of them were younger than her. And what if she refused to complete training? Hux didn’t want to see her cleaning toilets and requiring control panels; if it were beneath him, then technically, it would be beneath Keira.

  
_Or Alisande_ , he thought absentmindedly. It was clearly a name Brendol chose, near impossible to figure out how to pronounce. Alisande was a regal name, not the name of some girl who looked like she could fight a Hutt with her bare hands. And, if she were anything like him, she’d hate the name.

  
So Keira it was. He tossed the handkerchief into the trash, closed his eyes for three hours’ sleep, and hoped that Keira would be completely distasteful during training the next day.  
  
***  
  
“Your hair is wet.”

  
“So it is,” said Keira Mata. “I washed it.” Something in her stance betrayed anxiety, but she held his gaze.

  
“With _what_?” The sonic shower in the room she had been staying in with six other Takvans couldn’t have possibly made her hair that wet.

  
Keira looked at Hux like he had just sprouted a third arm. “The sink in the bathroom,” she said just a bit too slowly for his liking. “Was I not supposed to wash my hair?”

  
Hux also didn’t appreciate the way her eyes roved to his perfectly pomaded hair. “Well.” He narrowed his eyes just enough to possibly elicit a reaction from Keira, but nothing came. She didn’t fear him like his subordinates did; she had no reason to, especially since he knew that he hadn’t been out to kill her mother, though he did conveniently leave out Snoke’s plan to strap Vidia to a chair and torture her.

  
Maybe he’d tell her that part later on.

  
“Which sink did you use?” he said finally, scanning Keira’s face for any sign of emotion besides slight confusion.

  
“The only one with water I could find,” she said finally. “It just feels wrong to wash in the other kind. I feel clean, but not clean-clean. You know?”

  
He did know. “No, I do not,” said Hux, “and you must use the shower you are provided.” She really was like a child, he realized; a child who he could mold to whatever whimsy of his will that he wanted. Gaining her trust was the only reason he had decided to talk with her instead of just immediately teaching her how to shoot a blaster.“Are you really twenty?”

  
Keira nodded. “People say I look—“

  
“Older,” said Hux knowingly.

  
“Younger,” Keira added at the same time. Her face flushed, and he felt a tiny glow of pride in his chest that he had been successful in holding his blush down.

  
“Of course I’d think you were older,” Hux continued. “The sand has whipped your face to death, along with all the harsh winds of Takvo and the strain of the sun. No doubt you’ve aged quickly.”

  
The girl shrugged. Hux absolutely hated shrugging with a passion he otherwise reserved only for the Resistance and for sweet tea. “You don’t have to be hostile to me. If we’re not hostile to each other, I’m sure this will be easier. I don’t think you particularly want to do this.”

  
Hux bit back his next comeback. Keira was sharp, he had to admit, sharper than he had expected from a girl with no education and barely a home planet to speak of. But then again, there was the problem of not being hostile. “I’m just a hostile person,” Hux snapped without thinking.

  
“I gathered.” Keira tucked a strand of crudely chopped hair behind one ear, which glistened with multiple piercings. “So what’s the point of this, exactly? What are you training me for? Am I fighting in wars?” An auburn eyebrow flicked upwards. “Am I going to pilot?” A smile broke out across Keira’s wide face, creating tiny dimples on either side of her mouth. “I watch the ships, you know. The aircraft. Sometimes they break the atmosphere and I go onto the beach and just watch them fly. I always wished I were flying one. I could do that, you know. I could.” Her eyes had become wider, almost pleading.

  
Hux just barely stopped himself from rolling his own eyes. “Maybe,” he said noncommittally, unsure whether she could even begin to handle a fighter. The unmarked uniform he had given all of the Takvans seemed to fit, though it contrasted sharply with the slouch of her body and the crudeness of her appearance in general. It seemed she had forgone the cap entirely, instead allowing the entire ship to see her unruly hair.

  
But she was small and scrappy, like a pilot. “Maybe,” he repeated, more to himself than to her. “If you decide to look presentable.”

  
Keira snorted. “I’m wearing the uniform. What do you want from me?” The edge in her voice sounded just a pinch like Brendol’s, though with far less malice, and Hux had to keep himself from squirming away slightly.

  
“Well, your hair, for one,” he said, trying not to sound as hostile as she thought he was. This wasn’t hostile at all, for him; he could show her hostile. “It must be cut to First Order regulations. Did you saw it off with a knife?”

  
Keira scowled. “I thought we were going to be talking about, I don’t know, tactics or something. Not my hair. Not picking apart my morning routine.” The nervousness that had exuded from her was gone, replaced by a fiery defensiveness and sharp concentration. She had a need for control; that would be good. She also had a need to talk back to her betters, which was not so good, though Hux knew it would be easy to break her of that habit.

  
He took a deep breath. “All right,” he said, hoping that Keira could see his face close off, as if a door had been shut and padlocked in front of it. Perhaps they could start over and try not to feed off of each other like two wildfires. He stuck out one gloved hand as stiffly and formally as he could. “Colonel Armitage Hux.”

  
Keira stared at him. “I know who you are,” she said, trying to match his stoicism.

  
And then she slapped his hand. Hux immediately drew his hand back. “What the kriff,” he said slowly, enunciating every letter of the curse.

  
“You held out your hand.” A ghost of a smile played on Keira’s lips.

  
“So you could shake it,” Hux groaned, fighting the urge to slap Keira right back.

  
“What reason would there be for me to do that?”

  
“You’re joking, right? This is some kind of immature ruse—”

  
“I’m not always joking.”

  
_How fucking backwoods could someone get?_ Hux balled one fist behind his back. “It’s a greeting,” he choked out. “Just introduce yourself. Get used to formalities. You don’t live in a, er, sand mound like you used to.”

  
She ignored the jab. “Keira Mata,” she said. “Home planet: Takvo. Which you decided to blast to pieces.”

  
This was not going to be easy, not that he’d thought it would be. “Atrocities of war,” he said, not at all wanting to discuss the fact that Takvo was probably the smallest planet on which they’d ever conducted a practice strike.

  
“You weren’t at war with Takvo,” Keira retorted.

  
“Yes, well, we were _practicing_ for the atrocities of war,” Hux huffed. _Just shut up for once._

  
“Well, it was shit practice,” Keira muttered, so quietly that Hux wondered if he’d misheard. Before he could think about it, a crash resounded from the corner of the office. Hux’s projector had fallen from its perch on a sleek black shelf. “What was that?” said Keira. Her face had deepened to a dark red.

  
Hux stood up and stalked to the projector. It didn’t look broken, but he wished it had been, so that he could bark at the girl to leave so he could fix it, so he could maybe go to the privacy of his quarters, hold up a pillow, and scream into it with astounding force.

  
_This_ was why Hux never had many interactions with other people. Even if they shared blood, Keira was beneath him in every single way, and he absolutely loathed having to speak with her, having to be reminded of his father and the fact that if it weren’t for his ramrod-straight military upbringing, he could be a Keira. Hux visibly shuddered.

  
“It’s fine,” he called, voice sounding a bit more ragged than he would have liked.

  
“Are you sure?” Keira asked.

  
Hux ignored her. “Fortunately,” he began, “I don’t need the projector to inform you of what your training will consist of.” Hux swallowed harder than he’d wanted to.

  
Keira sighed. “At last,” she said.

  
“First of all, you will learn to respect your superiors,” Hux snapped, sticking one gloved finger in the air, “which is, evidently, a task you have just failed. Secondly, you will learn to handle yourself and your weapons with conduct and ease. Third, you will be completely and utterly loyal to the Order.”

  
He really wasn’t asking much at all. And then there was the incessant question of “what would his father think of Keira” that never stopped spinning through Hux’s head. He knew it didn’t matter; Brendol had long become a pile of biohazardous waste that had to be scraped off the bottom of a bacta tank and hurled into deep space, but the idea still nagged at Hux. On one hand, Brendol would clearly think Hux the superior child, but on the other hand, Keira was physically stronger.

  
“Are you all right?” Keira’s voice cut through the fog that was starting to develop in his head. She furrowed an auburn brow, and she suddenly looked so much like a child. She was a child, really, and Hux felt his stomach drop. Family didn’t matter, blood ties were just a mindless, old-fashioned concept, and yet he couldn’t say with confidence that he could let Keira loose on her own. If anything happened to her, he’d blame himself; her stupidity was naivety, and it was in the best interest of the Order for him to educate her. The idea that crossed Hux’s mind wasn’t purely driven by emotions at all. This was something he had to do.

  
“I’m fantastic,” Hux replied. “And, Keira. You will be training with me, personally.”


	3. that green light, i want it

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Keira learns the ropes and maybe gets a bit too curious about the wrong things (and maybe some of the right things, too), and Hux possibly smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw// characters shoot blasters in a training setting
> 
> chapter title is from Green Light by Lorde
> 
> enjoy!!

Keira had always prided herself on being a fast learner. Vidia had taught her to cure all sorts of herbs and meats in under an hour, and at age six, Keira had learned to read in under a year. And yet, she couldn’t quite learn to call the Colonel Hux, even though he had told her he preferred it over his title. Keira also couldn’t comprehend why she had come to find the way he rubbed the space between his eyes comforting, or how she’d come to enjoy the occasional thinly veiled compliments he’d give her when she recalled a particularly obscure part of Imperial history.

  
She also had no idea why Hux sometimes flinched when she laughed, or why she could see a flash of recognition in those clear, icy eyes. Sometimes she even felt fear rolling off of him like a new fog descending over an ancient stone city, although she didn’t know why outside of hushed whispers of the name “Brendol” in his mind. The man never stopped thinking, calculating, plotting; she was amazed he could function with all of the constant noise in his head.

  
“You think so loudly,” she said one day while copying the names of Imperial leaders into her datapad. It was shiny, new, and delicate looking in her hands, which were devoid of the dirt that once caked them but were still small and clumsy-looking without her uniform gloves.

  
“What does that even mean, Mata?” Hux sighed. “I only have fifteen minutes until my meeting.” He took a swig from the massive black mug of tarine tea on his desk, which filled the whole room with a thoroughly unpleasant, bitter stench. Keira didn’t mind it, really; it reminded her of the medicinal concoctions Vidia would make when she or some other Takvan fell sick.

  
“I don’t know,” she said. “You’re plotting.”

  
“Do your work.”

  
“You’re always plotting.” She leaned back in the meeting room chair.

  
Hux blew a stream of air out of his mouth. “Because that’s my job, Keira.” She had no idea how he managed to belittle her just by saying her name, but Hux routinely made Keira feel smaller than the droplet of tea that had splashed onto the table after Hux had set his mug down.

  
She could play his game, though, because that’s what it was. The man’s entire life was a constant power play, from the way he carried himself to his accent to the tips of his overly polished boots. “Tell me more about your job,” Keira said. “You know, what do you do? What have you done today?”

  
“Threw cadets who talk back out of the airlock,” Hux muttered. “Are you done with your— thing?” He rubbed his temples and took another sip of tea, then looked up at Keira for what must have been the first time in at least ten minutes.

  
“Yes, sir!” she barked, immediately bringing her hand up into a salute. It was stupid, all of it, she had realized. The formalities, the salutes, the constant respecting of your betters and shunning of your lessers; it was a huge act, and Hux loved it. Keira had played into it for a bit, especially when she’d first been brought onto the ship, but now she’d grown tired of it. It just didn’t seem important to forget to call someone Major or Lieutenant when the entire ship could get shot down and everyone could die at any minute. So Keira had taken to calling Hux sir, still, but only at the exact moments when she thought he’d be annoyed by it.

  
It appeared to annoy him thoroughly, as many things did, but he simply rolled his eyes and continued to look at his datapad, completely ignoring Keira and her smirking. She’d heard whispers around of how ruthless Hux was, how he’d helped kill his own father and how he’d most likely kill again to reach the rank of General. Keira knew people said that he wanted nothing more than to rule the galaxy, but she couldn’t reconcile that with the man sitting across from her. He just seemed exhausted, dark circles like purple bruises around his eyes and a slope to his narrow shoulders that she didn’t usually see. And why would someone who was supposedly so ruthless and fearsome want to train her? Keira couldn’t figure that out without prying deeper into his mind, which she didn’t particularly want to do, especially since she was sure he’d notice.

  
“You should start physical training soon,” Hux said suddenly, turning his datapad off.

  
Keira shrugged and saw a muscle between Hux’s eyebrows twitch. “Sure,” she replied. “How about that pilot simulation you told me about, though? Can we start that, too?”

  
That muscle between his eyebrows jumped again. “All in due time,” he said sharply,

  
“Oh, that wasn’t ominous at all,” Keira deadpanned. Everyone here was always so dramatic, even when the situation didn’t call for it. “Are there other cadets on the ship? Will I join them?”

  
Hux nodded slowly. “Eventually. They’re younger than you are, but they’ve had infinitely more years of training than you’ve had.”

  
“Not infinitely. Just ten more years of training.” Keira smiled, but she was sure that it didn’t reach her eyes. She’d been through earthquakes, sandstorms, tornados, and countless other natural disasters that she was sure Hux never even knew existed. She’d nearly been killed by bounty hunters and smugglers who stopped on Takvo and wanted to steal some of hers or Vidia’s goods. She was strong, and fast, and hardened, if not by the same path as the rest of the cadets. Hux, who had lived in stuffy, air-conditioned ships his entire life, had no idea what Keira’s life on Takvo had been like.

  
Hux grimaced back. “Have you ever fired a blaster, Keira?” he asked dryly, the side of his mouth flicking upward before returning back to its usual scowl.

  
“No. I’ve fought with a knife, though. And my mother’s sword. Blasters weren’t permitted on Takvo, by decree of the First Order.” Keira met his eyes. “Or didn’t you know?”

  
He stared back effortlessly, coolly. “I can’t be bothered with the laws set up for test planets. I have far more pressing matters to worry about.”

  
_Charming_ . A gut-wrenching silence followed, with Keira studying the names of officers until they swam before her eyes like the tiny silver fish in the stream behind her house, the stream that was destroyed by the descendants of those officers. The three babies who had just been born in the village had scaly skin the same color as those fish, and, like the fish, had been decimated under Hux’s orders.

  
He stood up first, and Keira swore she could hear the exhausted bones of his legs shudder. One man could be both ruthless and burnt out, she realized. It took exhaustion to be terrible, if every single fiber of your being is dedicated to destruction. And yet, he had saved all the humans on Takvo, and he’d begun to train Keira for seemingly no reason. There was some sort of compassion in him, or at least empathy, no matter how burnt and twisted and shoved deep into his core it was. That was why he was so capable of being terrible, and why everyone could sense it. Hux had plans beyond anything anyone could discern, and he was constantly working toward them.

  
“I suppose I’ll have to teach you how to shoot a blaster before we do anything else,” Hux said, motioning for Keira to follow him.   
  
***   
  
And follow him she did, down twisting hallways that she’d never seen before and through doorways that she was sure she wouldn’t be permitted to step through if she weren’t trailing behind Hux like a puppy. Hux halted in front of a door marked “Officers’ Shooting Range”, scanned the insignia on his sleeve and the door opened with a clang.

  
“This won’t be for long, Keira,” he said, stepping over the threshold. “You can practice on your own in the training rooms. I’d just like you to get the hang of it, if you’re going to be here.” His mouth twitched in a way that could have been a quickly-aborted smile, and he turned and strode into the shooting range.

  
It was nicer than any room Keira had ever been in, not that she’d been in many places on the Finalizer besides her bunking room, which she shared with five other Takvan girls and one girl from Arkanis who was missing a leg and being retrained, and the conference area where she and Hux went over the more scholarly side of her training. But while that room had dark gray metal walls, the shooting range had dark, matte black walls and high, transparent ceilings, which Keira could see the stars through when she looked up. Each section was soundproof, and there was even an area with ration bars and a sink for water. Through small windows, she could see officers shooting blasters, hitting targets with perfect accuracy.

  
Hux turned around to look at Keira, who tried and failed to look a bit less impressed. “Don’t get too eager,” he said. “The training areas are nothing like this. Consider it a favor.”

  
Keira didn’t really think Hux was the type of person to give favors, but she decided to keep that thought in the back of her mind for now.

  
Hux rapped on the door of one range three times, and it swung open to reveal a huge figure, taller even than Hux and clad entirely in reflective silver. They had a cape around one shoulder, and a blaster in the other hand, resting at their hip. The figure reached for their helmet and detached it with a snap and a hiss.

  
_Stars_ . Keira tried to keep her face as neutral as possible, but underneath the helmet was a beautiful woman, immensely powerful, with stern blue eyes and short hair of the lightest blonde. She nodded once at Hux with a small smile, and then her eyes roved to Keira, who was sure she was staring at the woman.

  
“Is this your protégé, Colonel?” she asked. Her voice was low, almost melodic.

  
“If you want to call her that, Captain,” Hux responded, but he didn’t seem put off by the question like he usually would have been.

  
“Mata, this is Captain Phasma, commander of the Stormtrooper forces.”

  
Keira saluted, without an ounce of irony this time.

  
Hux introduced Keira to Captain Phasma as well, while Keira stood there like an imbecile. She’d discovered her preference for women when she was only thirteen years old, when she’d kissed a Twi’lek boy, the son of a vegetable vendor in the village. She hadn’t been sure whether she didn’t like men or nonhumans, but it turned out she was perfectly fine with humanoids, considering her first girlfriend had been the boy’s cousin, a sweet, soft spoken girl named Jesyc. And Phasma was so tall, intimidating, and gorgeous; she was too old to pay attention to Keira at all, but Keira couldn’t take her eyes off her.

  
“Well, Colonel, I suppose you’d better train her. You wouldn’t want to get off schedule,” Phasma said, her voice holding just a hint of a laugh. Keira had found that no one really laughed in the First Order, at least not publicly. It was depressing.

  
“Of course not, Captain,” said Hux, proper as ever, and Phasma left, Keira staring after her.

  
“Friend of yours?” Keira asked as they entered the room.

  
Hux nodded. “An acquaintance. And no, Mata, not a romantic one.”

  
“Oh, I know,” Keira said. “There’s someone, though. Someone who distracts you.” She wasn’t sure how she knew, but sometimes she could almost see images that came off of Hux: flashes of dark hair, an arm covered in moles; nothing incriminating, nothing she’d be able to identify as a specific person, but still.

  
Hux’s nostrils flared. “That’s enough.” He closed the door behind him with a thud. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” He pulled his blaster out from the holster at his hip and handed Keira another one off the wall. “Don’t do anything yet. I need to prepare first.”

  
Hux proceeded to cleanly shoot five bolts into the target, which all careened through the first center hole he had made. He was a flawless shot, his body perfectly aligned.

  
“Do you think you’re ready?” Keira asked after the fifth shot. She’d found the power switch on the blaster he’d given her and had begun to get impatient. The blue goggles Hux had given her were already perched on the top of her head, and she drew them downwards onto her face. Blasters weren’t really loud enough to need earplugs, Hux had said, but he had given some to her anyway as well.

  
Hux checked the chronometer on the wall. “Hells,” he muttered. “I think I am. Come stand where I was standing.”

  
Keira did, and immediately held the blaster up in front of her like she’d seen people do in the few holos she’d seen.

  
“Wait,” said Hux, already sounding beaten down. “Feet shoulder width apart, dominant foot just slightly in front. Now put it in front of you, a bit lower than you did before.”

  
She obeyed, resting her index finger on top of the blaster’s trigger. Hux stepped forward and corrected the position of her hands. “Do you see the loop at the top of the barrel?” he asked.

  
Keira nodded.

  
“Look through that at the target. That’s how you’ll get the most accurate shot. Make sure it’s lined up with the one in back.” He seemed to be just as focused as Keira was, if not more so, adjusting her position and zeroing in on everything with the utmost efficiency. He was in his element entirely.

  
“Do I go?” Keira asked, accidentally talking straight into his ear as he fixed her arm.

  
“Absolutely not,” Hux said, glaring and drawing back. “There’s a recoil. It’ll kick back. Hold on tight and don’t bring it down until I tell you to.”

  
Maybe he was cold, but Hux wasn’t being rude to her. Keira wondered if he was actually enjoying this, if shooting a blaster was the one thing that gave him happiness. She didn’t want to think about that too much. “Can you count down?”

  
“Yes.” Hux looked at her expectantly. “Are you ready, Mata?”

  
“Yes, sir.” _Maybe_ this deserved a “sir”.

  
“Ready. Aim. Fire!” Hux said, and Keira did, the bolt of her blaster hitting the edge of the target. The kick shocked her, but she held it up until Hux ordered her to bring it back down.

  
“Again,” he said simply, but Keira couldn’t help but feel accomplished for at least hitting the target at all. They continued that way, with Hux sometimes holding her arms in position. The closer she got to the middle of the target, the more he seemed to animate. When she hit the fourth circle from the middle without his help, she could have sworn he smiled.

  
Once she’d gotten use to the recoil, Keira’s shots were increasingly accurate, and finally, finally, after what seemed like eons, Keira hit the second circle from the middle. “Yes!” she crowed, turning to face Hux, who was still standing behind her with his hands folded behind his back.

  
“Keira,” he said, palpably measuring his voice. “That was... more than satisfactory.”

  
“Thank you, sir,” Keira replied. She’d been stopping herself from beaming, but she decided to let a smile slip out.

  
“You do learn quickly. Of course you do.” Hux seemed to be thinking out loud, but he held a hand out to Keira. She knew what to do, now, and shook it heartily.

  
“What do you mean, of course I do?” Keira asked, but Hux was already taking her blaster and hanging it back up on the wall.

  
He turned. “I simply meant that I was correct in choosing you to train. You did well.”

  
It appeared giving that compliment had been too much for him to handle, because before Keira could open her mouth to thank him, Hux had already gone out the door.   
  
***   
  
Keira squinted into the darkness of the hallway. She’d taken to walking around at night to clear her head, like she had done back home, but the bleak halls of the Finalizer weren’t exactly easy to navigate. They all looked the same, so Keira had to use the positioning system on her datapad just to get back to her quarters, even though she hardly ever went far. She wasn’t even supposed to be out, technically, but if anyone had asked she’d say she couldn’t sleep and was going to do some strength training. Hardly anyone was ever awake at this time, anyway, and she knew everyone had better things to do than to stop her wandering.

  
It wasn’t as if she was being secretive in any way. She’d asked Hux about it, and he’d even said he often took walks around his hall to relieve stress, so it wasn’t forbidden, unless she walked into an area of restricted access. So many areas were restricted to her, which Keira despised, but there wasn’t anything she could really do about it.

  
There was one restricted hall, though, that always caught her eye. She’d seen Hux walking out of it earlier that day, and she’d saluted him (waving wasn’t appropriate, he said). He’d nodded, which was definitely more of an acknowledgement than he’d usually give a cadet, and Keira almost laughed out loud when she realized he was the closest thing to a friend that she had on the ship.

  
The hallway he’d walked out of had been completely lit with red light, without any of the streaks of dim blue and purple that lit the rest of the ship, and the words “RESTRICTED ACCESS” were written prominently above the looming onyx doors. They were usually closed, with a stormtrooper standing in front of them, blaster at the ready.

  
As Keira approached those same doors, she saw that the stormtrooper wasn’t there tonight. She was going to walk past, she really was, but upon closer inspection she found that the door was just barely propped open.

  
Curiosity got the best of her, and even though she could almost perceptibly hear Hux berating her endlessly in her head, Keira opened the door just enough so she could fit. No alarms sounded, no sirens wailed, so she closed the door behind her and started to walk. Except for the red light, which washed her coal-colored uniform a brilliant scarlet, the hall was the same as any other. She figured that she should turn around, that there were probably cameras, that she could get shot at any moment.

  
_Thump_ .

  
Keira’s heart jumped into her throat. Someone was coming. She was dead. Hux was going to send her to reconditioning, and she didn’t even really know what reconditioning was yet. She instinctively flattened herself against the wall, wishing that one of the doors that lined the hall was unlocked, or that she could run quietly enough and quickly enough to get out of there. She could hear ragged breathing; was it her own? She glanced up at the camera above her— how could she be so stupid? Hux didn’t run the ship, though he did emanate power, and she had no idea who actually did.

  
Just as she was about to turn and flee, whatever the cost, a figure in uniform rounded the corner and reached for a blaster at their hip. Keira froze and thrust her hands out, indicating that she had no weapon, and braced herself for the shot that she knew might strike her anyway.

  
But nothing came.

  
Instead, the figure ran toward her. “Come on,” they said, in a low but almost definitely female voice. “Someone’s coming and I don’t want you to get caught up in this.”   
Keira didn’t move.

  
More quickly than Keira thought possible, the woman grabbed her arm and began to drag her. “I really don’t want to hurt you,” she said through gritted teeth while Keira struggled to catch up. “I know you’re a cadet and I know you’re Colonel Hux’s favorite but if they think you’ve been snooping around with me then you’re going to be in some knee-deep shit, Cadet.”

  
They reached the end of the hallway, and Keira attempted to wrench her hand from the woman’s grasp, but she held Keira’s wrist in a vice grip.

  
“Can you please let go of me?” Keira panted. “We’re out, and I’m really getting a bit winded from all of this—“

  
“No way, Cadet. We’ll stop at the training center, where you’ll pretend to be training and I’ll pretend to be spotting you. Perfect.”

  
Keira wrinkled her nose. “In my uniform?”

  
“Yeah. It’s not that odd.”

  
“And the cameras?” One of Keira’s legs buckled under her, and she had to shout to be heard over her own heavy breathing.

  
The woman turned her head. “Took care of it already. Don’t ask questions, just run. We’re almost there. You got this.”

  
The two of them reached the training center in a few labored breaths, and Keira nearly slammed the door behind them. A few seconds later, she thought she heard shouts and heavy, even footsteps coming from the hall outside, and she proceeded to jog around the track that ran the perimeter of the room, while the woman who’d brought her here watched.

  
In the light, the woman was beautiful, with curly dark hair emerging from underneath her cap, even though she seemed to have tried to keep it in a bun at the nape of her neck. Her eyes were stormy grey, and her full lips were set tightly together, though the rest of her face didn’t betray any anxiety at all. She was taller than Keira, and a bit slimmer, but they looked to be roughly the same age.

  
Keira felt something like a flutter in her chest, a feeling the likes of which she usually just ignored. It was different from the emotions she had felt in Phasma’s presence; this girl wasn’t as intimidating, and she’d just saved Keira from what could have been certain death.

  
When the clanging footsteps faded outside, Keira slowed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name,” she said, idly playing with her fingers.

  
“Oh! Specialist Celine Astor,” she said brightly, turning on her heel to face Keira. “You can call me Celi. I’m from Kotor. Sorry that this was the way we had to meet.”   
Keira smiled in a way that she hoped wasn’t absolutely horrid. “Keira Mata. I’m from Takvo, so I really just got here.”

  
Celi stared, looking like she’d been slapped for a second. “I know. You’re Colonel Hux’s, ah, trainee.” She clapped her hands. “That must be something. Even the stick up his ass has a stick up its ass.” She paused, looking around, her eyes finally landing on the camera near the door. “Camera’s off. It’s fine.”

  
“He’s all right,” Keira said. “Serious, kind of scary, but all right.”

  
“I’ll bet it was because of your hair. I bet you’re the only two people on the ship with hair that color, except Captain Canady, but his hair is getting gray as it is.” Celi started to mess with the bottom edge of her uniform top; she was nervous, too, and Keira hoped it wasn’t just the adrenaline from the mad dash to the training area. “You don’t have to tell me what you were doing in the restricted area if I don’t have to tell you.”

  
“Deal,” Keira said. She felt her cheeks getting redder the more she looked at Celi’s generous lips and soft, thin hands.

  
Celi stepped closer. “I like it. Your hair, I mean.”

  
_Okay, maybe by some miracle this is actually going somewhere_ , Keira thought, a bubble of hope rising in her chest. “Thank you,” she said softly, suddenly noticing that she could feel Celi’s breath on her face. She unconsciously licked her lips, before she could think better of it, and Celi’s eyes flashed down to Keira’s mouth.

  
“Oh my gods,” Celi said softly, and suddenly her hands were around Keira’s waist and Keira’s hands were on Celi’s shoulders. Celi tucked a strand of Keira’s hair behind her ear, their eyes met, and both of them leaned to close the final couple inches between them. Celi’s lips were impossibly soft, and when Keira nipped at the bottom one, she actually gasped softly into Keira’s mouth, and her hands tightened at the small of Keira’s back.

  
After what seemed like cycles, they pulled away so that their faces were just an inch apart. “I think I’m going to have to see you again later,” said Keira softly before kissing Celi again. Keira opened her mouth this time, and Celi followed, her tongue pressing against Keira’s. One of Celi’s hands raked through Keira’s copper hair, needy, and Keira placed her right hand on Celi’s neck, feeling the other woman swallow roughly.

  
Finally, they moved apart again, cheeks flushed and lips swollen. “I think I’ll have to see you again, too. What’s your datapad call number?” Celi asked quickly, the blush on her cheeks deepening. Keira told her, and they kissed one last time, fervent and desperate, before Celi said she had to get back before her curfew was up.

  
Keira stared after her slim figure as it retreated down the hallway, and as Celi turned a corner, Keira hoped that it hadn’t been just adrenaline, that Celi would message her, that they could do this again. Maybe next time they could sit together at the canteen, and maybe they could find somewhere private so Celi could knot her fingers into Keira’s hair again, so Keira could feel Celi’s soft gasps against her lips.

  
Keira silently unlocked the door to her bunk. _If there is a next time._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late update, but I got a job, so I don't have as much time. I decided to write 4k to make up for it, though. Yes, Celi and Keira are absolutely gonna go somewhere with this. I can't wait to write more about them, hold on tight. Check me out on Twitter @remorselessgay for more updates and just me generally losing it 24/7.


	4. a little dream of mine, a little nightmare of yours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hux has a dream. Keira does too. Maybe the rumors about Keira's power are true.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW//Mention of gore, child abuse, marital abuse, patricide, Brendol maybe killing Hux's mother, basically just Hux's fucked up childhood in the context of a dream. Mention of Vidia's death. Drug use (Hux needs stims to sleep). 
> 
> The title is from the song Sloom by Of Monsters and Men. Thank you to Azure (@BURIALS on Twitter) for helping me come up with Hux's backstory!!

He was falling.   
  
He could hear the broken thud of his bones cracking in his ears, the faraway voice of a woman. She screamed for help and then stopped for just three breath-stealing seconds, her voice cut off by a loud thud and the gruff growl of a demon.   
  
He was a demon that Hux knew well, one whose claws extended and grabbed onto his back even after the demon had died. Hux didn’t believe in anything supernatural, but it was with the dogged persistence of a ghost that his father’s memory haunted the colonel’s every move. He would never not be Brendol’s son, the skinny bastard boy who he’d fathered during a tryst with a member of his Academy’s kitchen staff. Hux’s face was almost completely that of Lilia Cialish, an eighteen-year-old Arkanian girl who barely spoke a word of Basic and had likely been coerced into getting in bed with Brendol, though there was no way for Hux to be sure of that. Lilia had died when Hux was six years old, right before he and his father had fled Arkanis.    
  
Brendol had never told little Armie how his mother died, or even when she did; she was just there one day and gone the next, and Armie didn’t think much of it. He figured she’d be back eventually, and had pestered his father about it until he’d received a slap to the face and was sent to bed without dinner. He knew now that Brendol had ordered Lilia poisoned, her body burned and her bones dissolved in acid until there was absolutely no way to find her, identify her, or bury her.   
  
So naturally, that was how Hux decided that Brendol would go, too. Phasma had been the one to actually do the deed, not that Hux wouldn’t have done it himself; he just felt Phasma would have more of a flair for it than he would. She proved him right when she smuggled a beetle from her home world onto the Finalizer, one whose bite would cause mild itching and, in just a few short days, liquefy the entirety of Brendol’s insides until he dissolved, silently screaming, in a bacta tank. Hux had watched as he died, his body withered to nothing, the outline of his feebly beating heart visible through the deteriorated, translucent skin of his chest, and he’d found himself laughing.   
  
“Brendol, please, not again!” Hux’s mother’s plea surrounded his ears, weaving through the tunnels of his brain and settling there, only to reverberate back out again. By this point, Hux knew he was dreaming, as he had this same dream almost every night, or at least a variation of it. But this time, Lilia’s voice changed, morphed into someone else’s.   
  
Hux turned the corner of the hallway he was in and looked down to see that he was in his old Academy uniform. He couldn’t have been older than thirteen at this point, his scrawny limbs still short and stunted. He could feel bruises on his arms and legs, and one fresh one on his stomach, blooming purple, red, and blue.   
  
“Brendol, you can’t.” It was the strange woman’s voice again, heavily accented and soft. “She’s so little. You wouldn’t.”   
  
“I won’t be filling my Academy with useless rubbish.” Brendol’s voice sent chills up Hux’s spine.   
  
“You kept Armitage,” the woman said. She pronounced his name differently than his father did, rounding out the vowels with her accent. “He’s not useless.”   
  
There was the sound of skin hitting skin, then silence. “You don’t know what he is, Marys,” Brendol growled. “The boy is an imbecile, and there’s no way that a girl could be better. Have you seen her? Fat little bastard, she’d eat up all the rations. And the marks on her skin—“   
  
Marys had to be Keira’s mother, the unnamed woman who was dropped onto Takvo with Alisande Hux, aged three years, to die. Hux blanched at the way Brendol was talking about Keira but suppressed a laugh, too; Brendol’s complexion and fitness definitely left something to be desired, far more than a toddler’s would, but he’d always been a hypocrite.   
  
“Stars.”   
  
Hux whipped his head around at the voice behind him and found himself eye-to-eye with Keira, who was, in fact, an adult. “Hux?” she said, wide-eyed. “Is this your dream?”   
  
Hux shrugged, then internally cursed his thirteen-year-old body for doing so. “I suppose it is.” He didn’t particularly feel the urge to argue with imaginative apparitions at the moment.   
  
“Very well,” Keira said. “And you’re little.”   
  
“I suppose I am.”   
  
“You were adorable.”   
  
“Oh, be quiet.” Thank gods his voice had started to change within the next year, because Hux couldn’t stomach the sound of his prepubescent voice.   
  
Keira opened her mouth to speak, but was cut off by a string of curses from Brendol. She started, glancing at Hux out of the corner of her eye. “You should wake up.”   
  
“He tends to be like that.”   
  
“My mother,” Keira said softly. “My mother is in that room.” Her voice grew louder and louder, more and more frantic, until all of the lights in the hall blew out and an alarm sounded, distant at first but growing louder.    
  
“MOTHER!” Keira was screaming now, her lips bloody and raw, the skin around her eyes peeling, dissolving, revealing tendons and bone underneath.    
  
_ She has Father’s eyes _ , Hux thought wildly, and the alarm got louder and louder as he sat up in bed at exactly 0500, hair a mess and chest heaving. By 0700, he forgot the dream entirely.   
  
***   
  
“The rations are awful.” Keira pouted, pushing a cube of white protein-supplement-something-or-other around on her plate.   
  
“It doesn’t need to be a five-course meal,” Hux replied, though he did agree that Protein Cubes were not exactly delicious. He wasn’t used to eating meals with anyone; he usually went back to his quarters to eat, but recently, he’d been allowing Keira to accompany him. She was steadily becoming less annoying, although she still talked too much and smiled far too openly. He knew other officers joked about Keira being his new lieutenant, and he was positive that even more crass jokes were being made, but he paid no attention to that, though it was technically treason.   
  
“Maybe you should take it up with the General,” Keira said. “Colonel Hux requests actual food that’s not cubed.”   
  
Hux snorted. “Some cubed food is good.”   
  
“Name one food improved by cubing.” Hux hesitated, and Keira crossed her arms. “See? You can’t.”   
  
“We are supposed to be discussing your physical training progress,” Hux said, desperate to steer the subject away from rations. Recently, Keira had been able to practice hand-to-hand combat with some of the younger cadets that were onboard, and Hux surmised that her rough upbringing had made her more adept at it than he had thought she’d be. Keira fought dirty, which he expected, and she was quick, which he hadn’t. She’d beaten three out of four of the cadets, but the fourth one, a short but muscular boy named Vok, had punched her in the stomach and then in the mouth so forcefully that a trickle of blood ran down her chin, and Hux and the other overseeing officer had to call off the spar. Vok hadn’t followed the training rules and hadn’t waited for the officer to call the beginning of the match, so he was taken to a short session of reconditioning while Keira recovered.   
  
“We do that every day. How much can it change, really? Besides Vok giving me an awful bruise.” Keira touched her stomach lightly over where the bruise was. Hux was sure it ached, but Keira didn’t even flinch when she pressed it.   
  
“Your hand-to-hand combat is coming along, I’ll admit that.” She was passable with a blaster, too, and with the rusty practice bowcaster that she’d found in the cadets’ training area. Contrary to his original beliefs, Keira was already becoming accustomed to life on the ship. The questions she asked were usually pertinent, and even her posture had improved since she’d first been shuttled onto the Finalizer, hair matted down, clothing filthy, clutching the dead body of her mother. Hux didn’t lie to himself; he didn’t feel sorry for her. Fortunately, he’d divested himself of that particular emotion at a young age, but he had felt a surge of relief that his own mother had died before he was really old enough to remember her.   
  
But even with all her improvement, something about Keira seemed off. It wasn’t worrisome, certainly not a sign of disobedience as far as he could tell, but Keira just seemed more distracted than he’d seen her since her mother’s death. He almost wanted to tell her what her origins were, that her home planet was probably Jakku and somehow, through some glaring coincidence, she’d come upon her half-brother who happened to be an officer in the First Order.   
  
But at least he knew something that could bring Keira back before she became completely uninterested in her studies. Hux was planning to give her a low position on the ship in the next few months, and he couldn’t tolerate disinterest in the Order, anyway.    
  
“Keira.”   
  
“Yes?”   
  
“Do you wish to go flying in the next couple cycles?”   
  
The young woman’s head immediately snapped around, dislodging her command cap from where it hid her choppy red hair. Hux had spent longer than he’d deemed necessary trying to gel it down with the First Order’s regulation pomade. Both of them had hated it, but Hux would have rather instructed her personally then ordered some clueless lieutenant to.    
  
(And maybe it had been brotherly. He didn’t know. Hux never had to be brotherly.)   
  
“I’d like that,” Keira said, her excitement just barely contained. “I’d really, really like that.” She flicked her eyes downward for a second.   
  
“Piloting is not my expertise,” Hux continued. “I won’t be teaching you flips, if that’s what you’re looking forward to.” He had been specially trained as a sniper, due to his steady hand and, quite honestly, the fact that he possessed the type of bloodlust required. He had been Keira’s age then, twenty years old, freshly out of the academy, and already with a higher rank than any of his peers. Some of his former classmates were on equal footing with him in theory only; though they had held the same titles, their parents had been Imperial officers. Brendol had been, too, but he had no interest in bribing anyone to raise his bastard son’s rank. Hux had risen based on pure talent and ambition.   
  
But Keira did have the makings of a pilot; she was small but strong, and had quick enough reflexes for it. Much of the actual art of piloting was beyond Hux’s knowledge, but surely someone would be willing to teach Keira, have her train under them.   
  
“It doesn’t have to be your expertise,” Keira said. “I don’t want to sound sentimental, but I’ve watched the ships go over the ocean— back on Takvo, there wasn’t much to do, and I’d take so many walks and just watch.” Her cheeks colored from either excitement or embarrassment; Hux couldn’t tell which. He’d reprimanded her for being too sentimental before, noticing and pointing out all the times she would reference Takvo and her mother, Vidia. Once, Hux could even see Vidia’s dead eyes, staring up at Keira’s face, and the sight tore into him as it must have torn into her. That was during one of their first meetings, when Keira had cried and Hux had ordered her to stop, but she hadn’t been able to, twisting Vidia’s necklace around her hands and hiding her face. Hux hadn’t known what to do apart from giving her a slap to the face, which he knew was certainly the most efficient option but probably not the best way to earn one’s trust, so he refrained.   
  
“Takvo is gone,” Hux said crisply, “but you’ll be able to pilot a small fighter in the next couple cycles.” He stood up, gathered his datapad and ration bar in one hand and his tumbler of tea in the other, ready to leave.   
  
“Colonel?” Keira spoke softly, like a child to an adult, urgent.   
  
“Yes?”   
  
“Last night,” Keira began, hands clutching at the hem of her tunic. “Did you have any strange dreams?”   
  
The events of Hux’s dream the night before hit him like a bullet to the back. How could she have known? Hux barely ever even dreamed; the stims he took prevented anything beyond a deep, dreamless four-hour sleep. Dreams would sometimes slip through the cracks, but they were always mundane; watching a holo alone on his couch, getting ready for first shift, and occasionally sensual moments with a lover who didn’t even exist when Hux was awake. But last night’s dream had been so tangible, so intense, like no dream he’d ever had before, even the ones from before he took stims and prior to the atrocities of war he had witnessed.   
  
He could deny it, easily, but denying everything was not the path to gain Keira’s trust, even if she did trust more freely than most people he had met. It had to come from living on a planet too crude to even be called the middle of nowhere, but it really didn’t matter why Keira was the way that she was; it only mattered that Hux could use her to his advantage, gain her trust and solidify that trust by revealing their blood connection.   
  
“Yes,” Hux said simply. “Such things can be brought about by stress. My position on this ship is a high one, and—“   
  
Keira shook her head frantically. “It wasn’t stress. Sometimes this happens. My mother and I used to have similar dreams. She said that...” Keira trailed off. “You wouldn’t care what she said. I just have to know what type of dream you had.”   
  
“You don’t have to know anything,” Hux sniffed, but his heart rate did raise just a bit. He did believe in the Force, and he had seen those sensitive to it. There was an off chance that Keira could somehow manipulate it, whether knowingly or not, especially since Vidia Mata had been suspected of the same. Hux didn’t want any Force user prying into his mind and his dreams, and a part of him had to know whether he and Keira could have somehow shared a dream.   
  
_ Is this your dream? _ Her remembered voice now reverberated through Hux’s head, as soft in the dream as it was now.   
  
“Please,” she said, softer still. “Listen. My mother told me this could happen. I need you not to tell anyone. Please.”   
  
High Command never cared about the Force, and the Supreme Leader seldom called Hux in to report. He wasn’t sure who he would tell about Keira’s sensitivity, or who would even care. Kylo Ren might, but he might just as easily see Keira as a threat begging to be eliminated, and Hux couldn’t dare to think of that. If he let Keira die by Ren’s hand, he’d be no better than his father, who had tried to indirectly kill Hux multiple times during his years at the academy.   
  
He nodded curtly, just one quick downwards tilt of his head, but Keira’s fast flush of relief was unmistakable under her fair skin. “I have no desire to tell anyone.”   
  
Keira saluted, a misplaced but well-trained gesture, but her face broke into a grin. “Thank you, sir,” she said softly, before scuttling away, stepping lightly as if she were trying to sneak out. Hux leaned back, looked up at the blank, black slate of the ceiling, and drew out a slow breath.   
  
***   
  
Maybe Hux would, actually, tell just one person.   
  
“Hara,” he nearly barked, glancing around and closing the door behind him as swiftly as possible.   
  
“How are the blueprints coming?” Hara asked, bent over a small flask of some cerulean liquid that was lightly steaming. Hux kept his distance.   
  
“Very well,” Hux answered, not wanting to reveal the secrets of his projects quite yet, even to Hara, who was so isolated she probably wouldn’t tell anyone. Besides, his various plans for superweapons were hardly practical, let alone finished. It was really just a hobby; he had no need to design any weapons at this point, since the Takvo test was successful in wiping out all life on the planet.   
  
“And how’s the sister doing?” Hara didn’t look up from her experiment.   
  
Hux placed his hand, perhaps a bit too roughly, on the counter in front of Hara to gain her attention. “Do you perhaps know anything about—“ He lowered his voice, though he wasn’t sure why. “The Force.”   
  
Hara’s head snapped up, and she straightened the delicate wire-rimmed glasses on her nose. “I’m a scientist. What’s known as the Force does exist, but beyond that, I have no knowledge.”   
  
“We share dreams,” Hux blurted, and clenched his jaw so hard he felt it pop so as not to say any more. He sounded crazy, as crazy as the older officers said he was.    
  
Hara nodded slowly. “So you’d like more stims?”    
  
Hux allowed himself to roll his eyes. “No. I simply wish to get rid of the connection.”   
  
“Some believe the Force can form links between people. I don’t subscribe to that, but who knows?”   
  
“Thank you,” said Hux, exasperated with being told what he already knew, and he exited the lab with little more than a salute.    
  
The bright red notification popped up on his datapad at the same time as it did for all the other colonels, its bold-faced letters declaring that there was a mole aboard the ship, disguising themselves as an officer, a stormtrooper, or even a janitor. Nobody really knew which, but they did know that crucial information was being leaked to the Resistance. Twelve TIE fighters had been shot down in a battle while trying to capture a Resistance territory, and though the mission had been top secret, forty X-wings were waiting for them as soon as they got close. Phasma was already prowling about the ship, looking for and interrogating anyone who stepped a toe out of line. He had been ordered to sweep a sector of the Finalizer as well.   
  
And sweep he did, sharp sea-colored eyes scanning over the throngs of inferior soldiers. Hux liked to imagine they were cowering before him, terrified of being accused of any suspicious activity, but he knew that he, too, was being watched tirelessly by his superiors.   
  
Some of the cadets, he knew, would be desperate to turn someone in, in order to rise in rank. Hux would be lying if he had never attempted to do so. Perhaps he had succeeded, even though the screaming boy who had been sent to reconditioning had had absolutely fuck all to do with the Resistance. But Hux’s title had changed, and that’s all he’d cared about, barely even sparing a thought for his fellow cadet who’d been sent to the bowels of the ship to be tortured.    
  
Now, patrolling the ship, Hux didn’t hesitate to send every single person who didn’t salute him to interrogation. There was no reason why they shouldn’t go, if they were innocent, so he felt no remorse while directing them to the commanding officers who stood in perfectly straight lines, awaiting the next person to interrogate. The mindlessness of sending them off was almost comforting; he could make them run off with a simple tap on the shoulder.   
  
Hux’s head snapped around immediately at the sound of enraged voices rising over the usual murmurs. He strode as fast as he could over to a gaggle of cadets, his impeccably polished boots clicking over the freshly polished floors. The cacophony died down as he drew nearer, and he caught a glimpse of red hair in the middle of it.   
  
Keira.   
  
“Move,” he commanded, and the sea of cadets all but parted to reveal his sister and a young blonde woman with a freshly blooming bruise on her cheek and fire in her eyes. But no matter how ignited she seemed, Keira was more so, an inferno ablaze in her eyes. Her nose was bleeding, and her lower lip was split down the middle, but she radiated power, curling around her like the smoke that twined around Hux’s cigarettes in between puffs.    
  
“Colonel,” the blonde woman began, “I believe this girl is a threat—“   
  
Hux turned his head toward her, disapproving, razor sharp, and she quieted immediately. “Mata is under my watch,” he began. “She is a loyal member of the First Order and operates entirely under my jurisdiction.”   
  
“But her mother was a witch—“ the girl tried to continue, but another searing glare from Hux was enough to shut her up. He recognized her as one of the Takvans, though he couldn’t remember her name, a wiry little thing with a hard glint to her eyes and chipped teeth that she now bared, feral, as she matched her gaze with Hux.   
  
“You will be sent to reconditioning immediately, due to your false accusations against Private Mata.” Hux kept his voice level, his entire demeanor the opposite of hers. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Keira relax and wipe a thin red trail of blood from her nose and lips and onto her sleeve. She was injured far less than her counterpart, whose bruise was slowly swelling up around her eye, causing it to shut in a fashion he found almost amusing. To the blonde woman’s credit, she did immediately leave, shoulders hunched and supplicatory.   
  
“What was her name?” Hux asked, once the crowd had dispersed.   
  
“Olixia.” Keira spat the name with such disdain that Hux had to make a valiant attempt not to smirk. “Olixia Vale. She’s hated me since we were children together, Maker knows why.” She began to move with the flow of the growing crowd, ignoring the commotion entirely. “She hated Takvo, hated all the ruins and rocks and heat, and she hated me and my mother the most.”   
  
Hux nodded in her direction, but he was completely unfocused on anything Keira was saying. His datapad was constantly beeping with a steady stream of orders and instructions, and he was afraid to take his eyes off it for a second.    
  
“She thought we were evil,” Keira continued, either oblivious to Hux’s indifference or ignoring it entirely. “Because my mother had the Force. She tried to hide it, so she wouldn’t get caught and be taken away from me, but she had it. That’s why she lived so far from town.”   
  
Hux did remember the tiny, crumbling home that Keira had led him to. Glyphs had been painted all around the outside of the shack, and crude beaded charms hung from the roof, but Hux had thought it all superstition. He knew the Force was real; he’d been thrown across the bridge three too many times by the Supreme Leader to deny that, but the thought of mere civilians being acquainted with such a power was a shock to his system. All that strength couldn’t possibly be gathered in Vidia’s slight frame, and yet if what Keira said was true, it was a good thing Ester had killed her. Snoke often sent his Knights out specifically to look for Force-sensitives, so that he could gather their power and use it to sustain his own life-force, and if Vidia had lived, she would have been stripped of the Force, or worse.   
  
_ They said she blew all the lights out. _   
  
Unbidden, Hux swallowed hard. He’d completely dismissed the rumors that had come in after the Takvo shuttle had docked. The facts were that once Vidia had died, Keira had screamed and clutched the body, something even Hux couldn’t blame her for. But a couple low-ranking officers aboard the ship had claimed all the lights had blown out the second Keira began to cry, flickering with her wracking sobs and then fading entirely. If, somehow, that had been Keira’s doing, then Snoke would soon find out.    
  
It should be Hux’s job to tell him. He’d likely be promoted immediately, but then again, there was no proof. Hux knew nothing about the Force, so it wouldn’t really be turning a blind eye if he simply neglected to report this particular finding to the Supreme Leader. He didn’t want to think about why he would do so, as family ties were absolutely not important to him in any way. He’d killed his own father in cold blood, or helped to, at any rate, and he could barely remember his mother beyond glimpses. Perhaps it was the slight resemblance she bore to him, or the fact that she was so young. More likely, it was the potential Keira had, the way she had started to shoot a blaster with ease and map out practice military strategies nearly as well as he could have at that age. She was sharp, a very quick learner, and had grown up on one of the most barren planets in the galaxy. He didn’t want that potential to succumb to the Supreme Leader’s power, to have to die by the hands of a creature who didn’t flinch at the idea of turning a human being into a shell.   
  
So it was entirely in the interest of the First Order that Hux offered her protection. He had a couch in the room outside his bedchamber, long and ice-blue, large enough for at least three people to lie down comfortably. Besides his non-regulation hair gel, it was the only extravagance he allowed himself to indulge in. And if any of the Takvan girls she roomed with let the rumors of her supposed Force sensitivity slip, Keira could be killed by Snoke’s hand.   
  
“Mata,” he said quietly. “I’m switching your living arrangements. You’re to live in the cadet barracks.” A space hadn’t opened up, but he was sure one would soon enough. Unfortunately, casualties were an everyday occurrence in the First Order, although not as much as they were (he hoped) within the ranks of the Resistance.   
  
Keira’s head whipped around. “Thank you,” she said, but she sounded mildly confused. “I can go get my belongings now, if that’s all right.” Hux knew Keira’s “belongings” weren’t even enough to fill the Order-approved bag the Takvans had been given.   
  
“One more condition,” he said, his uncharacteristically soft voice going down even more, so that Keira had to tilt her head to hear. “Until a space opens up, there would be an unusual arrangement. You may refuse.”   
  
***   
  
That night, Keira gained access to the high-ranking officers’ rooms, carrying only a bag and her datapad tucked under her arm, trying not to attract stares from the older Imperial officers. Luckily, Hux’s hallway was empty as she scanned her handprint to be let in, and the door swung open with a slight creak.   
  
“Welcome,” Hux said, itching to comb his hair out and step into his pajamas. It had been a grueling day, and he was exhausted, but he didn’t want to look quite so disheveled in front of the person he had started to consider his protégé.   
  
Keira nodded, setting her bag on the ground. She sat down on the couch without asking permission first, took a ragged breath, and just stared at him with his own father’s eyes. “Why are you doing this?” she asked, not so much suspicious as just curious.    
  
Hux couldn’t answer that, so instead, he turned on his heel and went into his bedchamber, combed out his hair, took a stim, and fell into a dreamless sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm BACK! Depression has been KICKING MY ASS so I decided to take a little (a big) break, but again, I wrote 4k to make up for it. The next chapter will be a lot gayer, don't worry!


	5. my body's made of crushed little stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which nebulas explode and Keira experiences many firsts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw// guns/blasters
> 
> chapter title is from the song of the same name by Mitski

The seats of Hux’s TIE Fighter were back-to-back, one side for piloting and the other for navigating. It seemed nearly brand-new, as if Hux seldom took it for a spin, but Keira didn’t mention that to him. He seemed familiar enough with the countless controls, deftly flipping a few switches and pushing a lever with his foot. Keira strapped herself into the navigator’s seat, her veins pulsing with adrenaline. This was it. This was what she had wanted since she was a child, the absolute freedom of zipping through space, and she couldn’t stop a grin from breaking across her face. The full expanse of the universe would be before her soon, and she imagined just how bright all of the stars would be, twinkling in front of her eyes   
  
“Hold tight,” said Hux, who she now couldn’t see at all but could feel sitting behind her, the vaguest presence up against her back. She heard the click of a button, the flip of a switch, and the fighter rumbled to life beneath them. Keira just barely suppressed a wild, abandoned laugh as a door opened above them, revealing a pitch black sea, dappled with winking stars. The fighter rose, slowly at first and gaining speed, the hangar becoming smaller and smaller under their feet.   
  
Vaguely, she heard Hux say something. “What?” Keira shouted over the rush of her own heart.   
  
“Close your eyes,” he said, in a voice that was minutely different from the commanding tone he usually employed. Keira obeyed, sitting in complete darkness for only a few seconds, drunk on the idea that she was at the mercy of the galaxy. “Now open them,” he said finally.   
  
Keira’s eyelids snapped open, and suddenly her entire field of vision was taken over by a multitude of little pinpricks of light, some larger than others. To her right, a small, ringed planet stood proudly among a cluster of meteorites, and just behind her loomed the shape of the Finalizer. It almost seemed like a scourge compared to the vastness of the galaxy, which looked so much larger, so much more palpable than it did within the Star Destroyer’s walls. At first, she felt giddy, the childish desire to reach up and touch a star bubbling within her. In the distance, the colors of a nebula drew her attention, mists of green and red and gold twining around each other like the Gaudery snakes she’d seen in a pit on Takvo, like fingers reaching out and grasping each other, only to let go again and start over.   
  
“Change the course,” Hux said, or maybe he’d thought it, but Keira didn’t care which. They drew closer to the halo of gas and dust, the ropes of color reaching out toward the fighter. Keira wished she could be swallowed up by it. That would be the best way to die, she realized, becoming a part of that endless net.   
  
“This is where the universe collapses in on itself.” Hux’s voice was less measured than it usually was around her, almost betraying awe. “Not technically, but the matter that makes it up does, and maybe somehow it’ll gather enough dust and gas and particles to create a planet, or a star, and the star will explode after a while, and once it does, it’ll look much like this again.” He turned to look at the back of Keira’s head. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”   
  
It wasn’t really a question, but Keira nodded. Here was birth, here was life, and she could feel the Force humming around her, crackling and sending tendrils out to meet the outermost strings of golden dust. Keira needed to be connected to the nebula, its energy clean and pure and light.   
  
And then, in the center of it all, she felt a different formation, a dark cloud blocking the radiance of the gases behind it, stealing the ethereal beauty of it and replacing it with opaque, infrared nothingness. It started to whine in her mind, louder than the comforting hum of the particles of gas.   
  
“What is that? What’s in the middle?” Keira asked aloud, only half-realizing she was speaking.    
  
“What do you mean?” Hux asked, slowing the fighter down to turn and look at her again.   
  
She moved her head to meet his eyes. “I don’t want to sound, I don’t know, cryptic or something, because I know you hate that, but there’s something dark at the center of this.”    
  
“Perhaps there is,” he agreed, looking down just for a second. “A star died here, I think, a long time ago. It was a supernova, so strong that it got to be too much, and it started to crumble on its own, without the help of any outside forces.” He turned back to face the front viewport. “It knew when it had to die, and it took care of itself.” His tone had hardened again, taking on its usual razor-sharp edge, and Keira suspected he was only half talking about stars. At any other time, it would have perturbed her to hear the very man who destroyed her home planet speak this way, but she was too overtaken by the nebula, feeling it coursing through her veins, fire and ice at the same time. She was every single star, planet, and being that ever was and ever would be.    
  
She wished Hux could feel it too, because that was the power he craved. His jealousy of Force users cut through her psyche like the monomolecular blade of his knife, and while Keira didn’t think herself very powerful, here she felt recharged, alight with the whole of the Force.    
  
Maybe Hux could feel it for just a second; Keira could grab his hand and try her damnedest to project it into his mind, as her mother had before, but what then? He could become drunk on the power, try to harness it in some way with machines and metal, and there was no doubt in Keira’s mind that he might. She had seen him pore over endless blueprints for weapons she could never understand, and beyond that, he’d just so happened to set the whole of Takvo on fire, so there was that. And there was the chance he would take advantage of Keira to do it; he could connect her to whatever contraption he had been poring over and use whatever energy she had until she was sapped and he was still insatiate, greedy to control the whole of the universe.   
  
So, Keira decided not to let Hux feel the thrum of the Force, the whispers and soft breaths of the entire universe, the Dark encompassed within the Light. Here, Keira could feel Vidia brush a hand against her forehead, through her hair, and she would share that with no one.   
  
A fissure in the air brought Keira back down from her high, the embrace of the Force rolling off of her like fog from a meadow. She wondered if that was what it was like to take your last breath.   
  
“Someone’s here,” she said quietly, more to herself than Hux, but she could immediately feel his alarm.   
  
“Can you tell what it is? Who’s here?” Hux asked, desperately scanning the map for unidentified craft. “I don’t see anybody.”   
  
“Bad feeling” Keira said, the knot in her stomach thickening with every breath. She could barely tear herself away from the nebula, its whispers becoming louder in her mind, but she tried to keep her face blank, expressionless.   
  
_ Beep _ .   
  
Keira and Hux’s heads both turned immediately toward the new blip on the map, a tiny red dot followed by four others, rapidly moving closer to the big blue YOU ARE HERE marker. Any vestige of peace, or even any emotion besides cold focus and rage, was gone from Hux’s eyes.   
  
“Mata.” His voice was impossibly measured.   
  
“What?”   
  
“I need you to press that button. The green one. Do you see it?”   
  
“No— Yes, I see it.” She imagined the button would bring them to hyper-speed, enabling them both to land safely in the range of the Finalizer.   
  
Hux had angled the fighter oddly, Keira noticed out of the corner of her eye, but she didn’t give it much thought. Her finger made contact with the button just as a beam of light surged past the window. Another one, almost like the first, burst forth from the TIE fighter, striking the ship beside them with a shrill screech and then a BANG.   
  
She wasn’t in the navigator’s seat. Keira was sitting in the gunner’s seat, her finger on the trigger. The ship beside them went down in flames, and she could just barely register Hux, telling her to hurry, to do it again, that they were “gaining on us, hurry up, are you an imbecile, Mata, just press it!”   
  
She did, again and again and again. The high-pitched “pew” of the lasers mingled with some other sound, even higher and more frantic.    
  
Keira realized they were her own screams, the same ones that tumbled out of her when her mother died.   
  
“Stop screaming. Stop,” said Hux, still maddeningly efficient, and Keira wanted to slap him across the face. They were going to die, they would die here, spinning alone in the nebula that she’d felt like such a part of. The Force was back, tickling at her ears, and she knew that it was only a matter of time until it would swallow her up completely.   
  
And what of Hux? He would just die, like the star that had eaten itself, and why did it matter to her? He was her mentor, but he was terrifying, and surely he could destroy a galaxy if he really wanted to. Keira could sacrifice herself, sacrifice them both, and hear Vidia’s voice once more—   
  
Keira felt a pressure on her cheek, and then another. Her face stung, and Hux was looking at her with fire in his eyes.   
  
“You are going to have us killed if you don’t stop your daydreaming,” he said. Keira could taste blood on her lip from where her teeth had dug in.   
  
“Who are they?” Keira asked, though she knew they were most likely Resistance fighters. One had crashed on Takvo when she was a child, its flaming wings in the shape of an X. They had found bones inside of the wreckage.   
  
“Rebels,” said Hux, in the same way that Keira would have said “fresh bags of shit.”    
  
“I figured,” she said softly. “And?”   
  
“I got three— well, we got three but I was aiming— and the other two retreated.” He licked his lips. “They’re gone. It’s not important. This shouldn’t have happened in the first place. I’m going to get us back to the ship.” There was something behind his words, something Keira couldn’t quite decipher.   
  
“It’s all right, I— It wasn’t your fault.” Keira’s whole body was still trembling. It was entirely his fault, but there was something in his face that was more horrible than ever before.   
  
Hux didn’t respond, and they rode the rest of the way in silence.   
  
—-   
  
Keira’s quarters were never quite warm enough. The relentless chill of the Star Destroyer’s metal walls seemed to seep into her bones like the water of the Takvan ocean. Though she’d been moved to a cadet bunker, it wasn’t much different in terms of chill. The bigger bed only meant that the sheets Keira would roll into were colder.   
  
But Celi’s quarters seemed slightly warmer, the blankets on her bed thicker than the sheets given to the cadets. Celi’s five roommates were out training, or eating, or something, so it was just the two of them under Celi’s covers, trying to keep out the cold. For Keira, it wasn’t only the chill of the ship that she was worried about, but also the ice in her bones, the biting feeling that she had  _ killed someone _ , she had pulled the trigger and no one but Hux knew. For the past three days, she’d constantly felt as though she was going to throw up, barely even able to complete the day’s training and see Celi at night.   
  
“I’m getting goosebumps,” Celi said, burrowing deeper into the bed and also closer to Keira’s side, into the heat radiating off of her. They’d begun to eat their meals together, along with stealing kisses in the closets of their training area and, at one point, silently touching what they could through the thick fabric of their uniforms. But now they were in regulation casual clothing, desperate to be together during their daily free time.   
  
“I think I might die,” Keira agreed, tangling her small legs further with Celi’s long ones. “Who would have thought deep space would be cold?”   
  
Celi pressed a short kiss to Keira’s neck, which smelled of sweat and shampoo and even a little bit like the makeup Keira had started to wear to hide her freckles. Celi loved them, but Keira had begun to insist the tiny dots on her face were distracting, unprofessional. Hux had told her it was the least she could do, since apparently her posture and mannerisms were also all wrong for someone who was training to be an officer. “You stick out too much. I’m telling you this as an acquaintance, and as someone with the same issue,” he’d added in a lower tone, touching his bright red hair with one hand.   
  
Cadets weren’t technically supposed to have any relationships, not even friendships, but no one truly followed that rule. Keira had so many horror stories of one of her roommates fucking one of the lower ranking officers while everyone else was trying to sleep, and Celi couldn’t say she was unfamiliar with the concept.   
  
The two of them sat in silence, Keira’s hair tickling Celi’s chin from where she’d pressed her head into Celi’s chest. Keira couldn’t help but close her eyes; Celi was thinner than she was, but her breasts were infinitely soft underneath the fabric of her shirt.   
  
“Keira,” said Celi softly, placing her hand on the small of the shorter woman’s back.   
  
“Mmm?”   
  
“Will you kiss me?” Celi’s voice was soft but insistent. Neither of them had much experience in the way of relationships, so they’d decided that their best bet was to just come out and say what they wanted from each other, which so far had been sweet, sloppy kisses and arms wrapped around waists.   
  
Keira laughed, a breathy sound that sent chills up Celi’s spine, and their lips met, gently at first and then more deeply. Keira licked her way into Celi’s mouth, mapping out her teeth, her lips, the soft skin of her cheeks. A few more seconds, and Celi’s hands were at the hem of Keira’s shirt, questioning.   
  
“Can I?”   
  
“Of course!” Keira laughed again, her body buzzing from both the kiss and the anticipation of what was to come, something she had only ever done once before. Being with Celi always made her forget everything that had been eating at her, at least for a while.   
  
Celi’s hands, light as a whisper, trailed lightly over Keira’s freckled stomach, her abs tightening of their own accord, until they reached Keira’s chest. Celi bit her lip as she felt one round breast and then the other, her eyes searching Keira’s face for any reaction. Keira grinned wider, hooking her arms around Celi’s neck.   
  
“I think it might be a bit easier for you if I—“ Keira turned red.   
  
Celi nodded, drawing one swollen lip into her mouth. “Yeah, could you like take off—“   
  
“Hold  _ on _ !”   
  
“You have to get your arms off of me if you’re going to—“   
  
“Right!” With the grace of a rather large bantha, Keira pulled the t-shirt over her head. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and her breasts were pale, perfect, almost white underneath the harsh light. Her shoulders were covered in freckles, as were her hips, which Celi could see peeking out of the top of her leggings. Keira had freckles on her stomach too, which was toned and yet still soft, the skin falling in little rolls that puffed out slightly over her waistband.   
  
She was gorgeous.   
  
“Keira,” Celi breathed, and then hesitated before she added, “Baby.” She took one breast in her hand, feeling the weight of it, and saw Keira’s nipple stiffen at the contact.   
  
All Keira did was take Celi’s face in her hands and kiss her again, pressing herself up against Celi, biting lightly and guiding Celi’s hands over her body. It was awkward, it was slow, and they were both trying to figure everything out. Eventually, Celi took her shirt off, too, revealing a non-regulation black lacy bra, which Keira immediately reached under.   
  
“You’re so fucking gorgeous, Celi, how do you—“ Keira just barely moved away from Celi’s lips, and their teeth clacked for a second.   
  
“Oh, sorry,” Celi said breathlessly.   
  
“That was my fault,” said Keira, at the same time.   
  
Their eyes met, and Keira placed her lips on the sensitive skin behind Celi’s ear, feeling Celi’s breath hitch. Celi moaned as Keira kissed down her neck to her chest and closed her lips around one nipple, licking lightly.   
  
“That good?” Keira teased.   
  
“Kriff you,” Celi hissed as Keira scraped her teeth against her skin. Celi grabbed a handful of Keira’s ass in response, causing the shorter woman to let out a little “aah!” They were a tangle of arms and legs by this point, grasping at each other like they were each other’s lifelines, their heavy breaths punctuating the stillness of the air. Keira gently put pressure on the front of Celi’s body, causing her to tip backwards onto the bed, and climbed on top of her to kiss her again, this time more deeply, the warmth of their bodies mingling into one.   
  
Celi let out another beautiful moan as her hands took hold of Keira’s face, pushing them together until she couldn’t take it anymore. Keira sat up to allow Celi to take her sweatpants off, revealing underwear that perfectly matched her lacy bra.   
  
With a deep breath, Celi wrapped her hand around Keira’s and brought Keira’s hand to the area between her legs, still clothed but barely, and her long eyelashes fluttered when Keira’s hand made contact. Celi even arched up a little bit into Keira’s touch, and it was all a little too much for Keira. She closed her eyes for just a second, removing her hand from Celi’s inner thigh.   
  
“Are you all right?” Celi asked in between sighs. She sat up on her elbows for a second, still biting her kiss-swollen lower lip. “Do you want to stop?”   
  
“No.  _ No _ ,” Keira said, a little too quickly, and then laughed. She realized she still had her leggings on, which was part of why she felt a little off, and she unceremoniously shucked them off, not completely unaware of how Celi’s eyes roved over her soft thighs. “I just... you’re so. Wow.”  _ Really eloquent, Keira. _ __  
__  
To be honest, Keira didn’t feel quite worthy of Celi and her soft little noises, the way she smiled when Keira kissed her, the way she fit her hand perfectly against Keira’s.   
  
“I really like you,” Celi whispered. “A lot.”   
  
Keira took a deep, shuddering breath. Just hearing those words made her more confident, more ready to give all of herself to this girl who  _ really liked her, _ who was willing to let Keira touch her and kiss her without really knowing who Keira was and what she’d done—   
  
Before Keira had time to revert to the shaking, emotionally scarred mess she had been over the past few days, she leaned to kissed Celi again while slowly moving her hand down Celi’s body, faster than before, until it once again landed at the waistband of her underwear.   
  
“Can I?” said Keira before she could think about it too much again.   
  
“Please.” Celi’s voice was barely a whimper, and Keira felt like a hot lightning bolt had traveled down from her head all the way to her clit.   
  
Keira ran her finger beneath the waistband, teasing, and slipped her hand into Celi’s underwear with the softest little sigh. Inexperienced as she was, she wasn’t entirely sure what to do, since her girlfriend had taken the lead with that kind of thing in her last (and only) relationship. But with Celi, it seemed only natural that it would be the other way around. Though she could fire a blaster with precision and could most likely wrestle Keira to the ground, Celi was delicate, and the space between her thighs was no exception. She’d shaved, something Keira had only recently found out that people do, and her skin was impossibly soft. Keira could feel Celi’s labia poking out like the petals of a flower, and she gently placed her pointer and middle fingers on the area above them and began to rub soft circles around Celi’s clit. It was longer than Keira’s and a little wider, and Keira hoped that her movements would give Celi the same pleasure they gave her.   
  
The taller woman let out the most beautiful sounds Keira had ever heard, even in holoporns, and words entirely failed her when Celi started to get louder and louder, her stomach twitching whenever Keira would press down a little bit harder. It was turning Keira on, too, and she felt herself becoming more and more aroused underneath her thick, First Order-issued boy shorts.   
  
She continued to kiss Celi, too, lightly biting at the skin of her neck and sucking. Keira was sure she’d leave a bruise, but Celi didn’t appear to be against the concept. Plenty of people aboard the ship had them, though many tried to hastily cover their bruises with makeup.   
  
Celi was becoming more sensitive, her moans filling Keira’s ears until they were all she could hear. The nebula she’d seen began to grow in her mind as Celi squirmed. Keira pleasured her in the same way she pleasured herself; she continued to touch Celi with her thumb while slipping one finger inside of her.   
  
Celi’s chest heaved. “One more,” she said, after a while. Keira closed her eyes and obeyed, savoring the tightness around her fingers and the look on Celi’s face. On her girlfriend’s face.   
  
She leaned down and kissed Celi, and felt a tremor run through the other woman’s body. Celi’s muscles tensed, and her eyes— oh, God, her gorgeous eyes rolled back into her head as she gasped over and over. Keira wasn’t quite sure what to do, so she rubbed Celi’s thigh until her orgasm was done.   
  
After Keira had wrapped herself around her girlfriend, Celi lifted herself up. “Can I do you now?” she asked, breathless.   
  
Keira nodded, too winded and lost in the comforting smell of Celi’s hair to say anything.   
  
Almost shyly, Celi moved to kiss Keira’s nipples, which made goosebumps rise all over Keira’s shoulders and chest. “Look at you,” Keira said, not realizing it was aloud.    
  
Celi blushed a deep pink. “I can’t look at myself,” she said, smirking behind her curtain of hair. Keira just laughed, waiting to finally feel Celi’s fingers on her.   
  
But what she felt was Celi’s velvet mouth, sliding over her inner thighs and stopping over her clit. Keira groaned.   
  
“That’s good, baby. That’s so good.”   
  
That seemed to spur Celi on, and she quickened her pace to short licks of different pressures. Keira had touched herself before, and had had one girlfriend do it for her, but this was so beautifully different. She could stay here forever, listening to Celi’s needy little hums, feeling Celi’s hands grasping her thighs.   
  
Far-off, Keira thought she heard a voice, a man’s voice, warning her of something that was to come. But it wasn’t at all loud enough to drown Celi out, so she didn’t care. The nebula inside of her grew and grew, until at last she had to close her eyes to see its splendor. It was as beautiful, if not more so, than the one she’d seen outside Hux’s fighter.   
  
And this nebula, this gorgeous cluster of stars and bright splotches of energy, had not a single trace of death in it.   
  
Keira moaned one last time and opened her eyes, her hand still threaded in Celi’s hair, and saw the other woman laughing. The glint in Celi’s eye was exactly like the one she’d seen in her mind, alight with energy.   
  
Celi moved upwards toward Keira’s face, kissed her temple with a soft brush of lips, and fell asleep.   
  
—-   
  
Everything was black.   
  
No, not quite black. It was the darkest grey possible, and the air was alight with tiny particles that Keira could just barely make out. She felt at once electrified and entirely zapped of energy, like she needed to move but her body wouldn’t let her.   
  
“Alisande.” It was a man’s voice, but not quite a voice. It was outside of her head but it reverberated through Keira’s very bones. The voice seemed to be searching her, and she felt her body tremble.   
  
The name rang a bell, but she couldn’t place who Alisande was or why the voice would be calling her. “I’m not Alisande,” she said. This was like so many of her dreams, where she would spin through nothingness until she woke up, but the voice was new. She wasn’t sure what to say.   
  
Keira felt something like a cold finger slide across the back of her head, and she shivered. “Keira,” the voice said. “That’s right. Is that what you’d like me to call you?”   
  
“I wouldn’t like you to call me anything,” Keira said, willing her body to move. She could only clench her fists desperately.   
  
The voice laughed, but Keira heard no humor in it. “I’ve felt you, Keira, moving through the halls. I’ve been able to track wherever you go on the ship. We’ve been so close lately. Don’t close off now.”   
  
“I didn’t fucking know I was opening and closing myself to anyone!” Keira said. She was conscious of the fact that this was a dream, but something about the voice felt tangible, like it belonged to a person who she could reach out and throttle. And whoever it was talked to her like a child, slowly and deliberately as if she couldn’t understand. The whole idea sickened her, and she was sure that she couldn’t come up with this voice on her own. Maybe this was Hux’s dream. “Are you looking for Hux?” she asked, her voice tinged with hope.   
  
The voice snorted. “There’s not much I can do with him. The moron barely dreams. You’re far more worthy of my attention, Keira Mata. I cannot yet tell if your ability is reliable, but that’s no matter. You will be useful no matter what.”   
  
“My ability?” Keira’s chest grew uncomfortably tight. “I don’t—“   
  
“You were five years old.” The voice interrupted her, losing its honey sweetness and growing rougher. “You knocked over your mother’s water jugs with your mind just because you were angry. When you arrived here—“   
  
“Please,” Keira begged, but the voice was relentless.   
  
“—and you held the lifeless, heavy, bleeding corpse of your mother in your arms, all the lights on the ship blew out. Do you recall that, Keira Mata?”   
  
“Yes!” Keira felt tears wash down her face, unbidden. The voice tutted.   
  
“ _ That _ is what I want. If you feel that anger, that darkness, all the time, you will have power beyond measure—“   
  
“Shut UP!” Keira roared. She tried her absolute hardest to move, even just a little bit, but she could only clench and unclench her hands. The ringing in her ears got louder and louder until hot pain sliced through her lower stomach. She let out a screech of agony and saw that a deep cut had stretched across her stomach, as red and shiny as a ruby.   
  
“That was a warning, Keira Mata,” the voice said, without a hint of a mocking lilt to it.   
  
Keira sat up immediately in bed, shaking her head just to clear it. She could still hear that voice, and hoped to the gods that it was some form of Hux’s conscience and not something else entirely. It seemed like it was still slipping through her ear canals.   
  
She twisted to turn on her light and let out a pained gasp. Through the fabric of her shirt, she could see a thin brown line on the bottom of her stomach. Trembling, Keira silently lifted her shirt, revealing a long, thin scab that spanned the entirety of her stomach.   
  
__ That was a warning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a WHILE. 14-hour school days were tough but I'm back and I'm gonna be updating as much as possible. Thanks for waiting :). Check me out on Twitter @remorselessgay for the usual shitposts.

**Author's Note:**

> Check me out on Twitter @remorselessgay for truly incessant tweeting and headcanons!


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